Why do I always reach for that blasted club when I know it’s not working for me?! I was hitting my hybrid pretty sweetly into the ever changing winds, but time and again I reached for the least suitable club for the conditions. Matt hit 1, 2 or 3-irons straight, low and long. I hit my driver high, short and left. Ironically, the one I did strike well went a grand total of 157 yards into a brutal headwind.
But playing golf in places like Leven isn’t about the score. I hadn’t played in more than a month, so it was all about the company and the surroundings. Golf in Scotland is different to anywhere else on earth. It feels like golf was invented here by the earth itself, tectonic plates, sea, wind and soil conspiring over millennia, lying in wait for those early pioneers to look out at the rolling dunes towards the sea and think, “Is it just me or does that look like a dog-leg par 4?”
Matt shot one under for the back nine, I lost seven balls. It doesn’t matter. I left feeling that in any other country, golf is an imitation of this. Factory knock-offs of the real thing.
My next stop was a bucket list course only accessible via a kind invitation from a member of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, AKA Muirfield.
Despite not being signposted from the road, a logistical pain as much as a nod to its exclusivity, you can immediately see why it’s a fool’s errand to try to keep this golf course secret. It really is something else!
If I thought Leven had a long history, try adding another 100 years to the records. Muirfield’s membership dates back to 1744. It’s so old, some of its club captains seem to pre-date not only photography but painting too, as silhouettes bear their likeness in the grandest clubhouse I’ve ever seen/peeked in through the window of.
The course is right up there with the best I’ve played, its unique, looping layout ensuring that you never quite settle into the direction of the wind. Everywhere you look is sea, rolling fairway, and wispy rough that blows like fields of wheat.
Luckily, my driver missed straight during the round, and I scored a respectable 94. For a mid-handicapper, playing courses like these in the wind for the first time, anything under 95 is a result. Especially when you’re dealing with the kind of bunkers I would need a decade of instruction to escape from.
But I was most pleased with my lost ball record, going from seven at Leven to zero at Muirfield. The same Titleist AVX accompanied me all the way round and even had the decency to drop from 40ft away on the 3rd hole. “Birdie!” I shouted, fist raised to the sky. “I’m afraid that was for par,” my playing partner responded, with a kind smile.
One thing I’ve learned from Scotland’s Golf Coast, is that just because the wind might make it feel like a par 5, there’s no breeze on the scorecard.
