Pix and musings from my trip to St. Andrews (and environs) for golf.
And you can best believe, I’m gonna burn this topic up if I make it on the Old Course. 
The Kings Course at Gleneagles - Sun, 14 May 2023
For some reason I took no photos here. WTF? It was a beautiful course, and we got a bit of rain at the end, so it was a perfect start to our trip.
And with that we go to…
Carnoustie Golf Links - Mon, 15 May 2023
Where I shot 85! Somehow I deleted my scorecard from my Golfshot app by accident so I have no scoring details. All I can say is…for the most part…I was driving the ball well. I had some big miscues from the fairway and some missed putts…but I played really well overall.
Videos from Carnoustie
Creiff Golf Club - Tue, 16 May 2023
Shot 83. Only hit 21% of the fairways, and 28% of GIR…so I was scrambling my ass off. Pretty much the usual. The nice thing is that a lot of those wayward shots were found so no penalty strokes.
Glenturret Distillery tour - Tue, 16 May 2023
This was fun as I’ve never been through a distillery before. It was a short tour with a tasting at the end. To be honest…wasn’t a fan of their whisky. It got all peppery at the finish and…ugh. I’ll stick with my Clan Denny.
And a lovely video of their babbling brook:
Wed, 17 May 2023
Some lucky bastards won the Old Course lottery ballot. A couple of us got up early to wish them well.
St. Andrews Links - Jubliee - Wed, 17 May 2023
For the rest of us…our regularly scheduled round at Jubilee. This was a fun round. Shot an 85, which for a bit more wind, I felt really good about.
R & A World Golf museum - Thu, May 18 2023
St. Andrews Links - New Course - Thu, 18 May 2023
Ugh. Shot 91. This was a bigger challenge as the wind was kicking up a bit. Mostly left → right on the way out, and right → left on the way in. You’d get to a par 3, hitting into the wind, club up by 2 and still end up 20 yds short. Brutal. Still a beautiful day for golf.
Edzell Golf Club - Fri, 19 May 2023
Gorgeous day for golf! Not a great day for scoring. 
Shot a 93. I had a hard time gauging my distances and hitting in the direction I intended. Not a recipe for good golf. But the weather was fantastic, the company was great, and please…I was playing golf in Scotland.
Proof that the sun does shine in Scotland and when it does those spring colors pop
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Yeah. It’s nice to have a reminder of how great the weather was while we were there. I feel bad I didn’t take many pix of the crew. But then…we’re not as good looking as the countryside was. 
St. Andrews - The Old Course - Sat, 20 2023
O.M.G.
I got on The Old Course, “The Birthplace of Golf”. 
Let’s set the scene. On Friday, our tour company said that there were 32 spots left open for Saturday at The Old Course. Some of the guys kept prodding me to get on line early because it seemed like I’d have a good chance to go out. Finally they wore me down and I decided to give it a shot.
So I set an alarm to wake up at 3:30am in order to queue up. I slept through that but somehow woke up at 3:50am. Threw on my clothes and ran down the block to get in line at 4:10am. I was #23 so I thought my chances should be good.
Here’s the beginning of this glorious journey:
At 6am a starter gathers all of us together to explain what’s gonna happen. There are 17 ‘guaranteed’ slots and 39 ‘possible’ slots. This is due to the way ballots are awarded, and tee times are filled by locals.
How the lottery slots are determined
If a two-some won a tee time through the ballot, there’s 2 slots available at that time. If a three-some won, there’s 1 slot available, and so on. These are ‘guaranteed’ slots. On the other hand, when locals book tee times of less than a four-some, they have the option to allow others to play with them or not. Those are the ‘possible’ slots because their availability depends on the generosity of the locals. 
So I was thinking it looked pretty good being number 23, since that meant there were only 5 ‘possible’ slots that needed to be filled before I could go out. The one complicating factor was that there was a Women’s League tournament that was going of between 11-1, so if I didn’t get out before that, it would be a long wait to see if I went out at all.
So we all piled into the small snack shack/clubhouse to sign up and get our official number. I decided to wait around. Here’s a quick video I took of that madness:
https://youtube.com/shorts/UuMRFiwwnPk?feature=share
So I waited. For two and a half more hours.
I talked to a tour operator for a bit, which was really instructive, and went to the putting green for a while. And then finally…I got the call! An 8:40am tee time with three locals. I was on my way.
Abeer and Ari are graduating from St. Andrews this year, and Amir is Ari’s younger brother. He attends Boston University. They were all really cool. We had a nice time. Abeer took my Swilcan Bridge pic and also took this video of me teeing off on The Road Hole (17) over the railway sheds:
As I approached the 18th green I saw Drew was watching. I holed out and yelled over how it was an amazing experience. Then I entered my score for the hole into my phone…and realized that I’d shot 79. WTF??? This is only the 2nd time I’ve broken 80 IN MY LIFE and it happens on this course. And it felt easy. And SO much fun. Makes me think I gotta get out and play more.
EDIT:
Oh I forgot to mention. After ending the round I texted the guys. They were over at the clubhouse eating lunch before going out on Jubliee. I had them order me a burger, I ran over, snarfed that down…and ran over to Jubilee to go out one last time.
I didn’t play anywhere near as well as I did on the Old Course…but I didn’t care. Too much. By the end I was dragging…but it was well worth it.
That’s most of it. I have some more pix to share but this was the heavy lift. I’ll drop the rest in shortly.
It’s embarrassing that I didn’t get more pix of me and the gang. I’m terrible at that. I usually grab a selfie or two and then the environs. I always forget to take pix of my travelling companions 'cuz we’re having fun and it seems weird to stop that and snap a few. Still…I always regret that so I’m gonna try to do better next time.
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