Two Years in St. Andrews - 2008

Excerpt

It was a ghastly, careening push-slice -- the mongrel of all golf shots -- that changed the course of my life. Okay, maybe that's a bit breathless, but there's no question that the banana ball I perpetrated on July 16, 1983, was the finest shot I've ever missed.

The scene was the 18th tee of the most famous golf course in the world, the Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland. As the editor-in-chief of Golf Magazine, I'd been invited, along with half a dozen or so colleagues from other American golf publications and newspapers, on a pre-British Open boondoggle, courtesy of a man named Frank Sheridan.

Sheridan had purchased the Old Course Hotel, the modern five-story monster that looms inharmoniously over the penultimate hole of the ancient links, the balconies of its sixty deluxe rooms jutting impudently outward from a chunky stucco frame. When the hotel first opened, back in 1968, Henry Longhurst aptly described it as "a dresser with its drawers pulled out," and despite its advantageous location, the place had never really caught on.

Sheridan, however, was determined to transform the hotel (which he'd rechristened the Old Course Golf & Country Club) into Scotland's premier hostelry, and to help make his point he'd drafted Jack Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros to launch a weekend-long celebration with a head-to-head match on the Old Course, to be reported upon by us conscripted scribes.

But at the eleventh hour, there arose what the Scots refer to as a wee glitch. Commandeering a tee time on the Old Course is not a simple matter, even if your names are Nicklaus and Ballesteros. The St. Andrews Links Trust -- which controls play on all six of the town's courses -- had ruled that Sheridan's circus would not come to town -- it would create too much disruption to the regular Saturday morning play. And so, rather hastily, the battle of the titans had been relegated to Ladybank, a comparatively unknown parkland course in a nearby town of the same name.

"It's just down the road -- you'll see the sign," said the hotel porter on the appointed morning as I headed out the door to my rental car along with Golf Digest's Ross Goodner, Ron Coffman of Golf World, and Furman Bisher, the venerable and feisty sports columnist for the Atlanta Constitution.

Down the road Ladybank was, but a bit farther down the road than we'd expected. We'd driven roughly ten miles, all four of us craning our necks at every little sign, placard, and poster, when Bisher boomed from the back seat, "Aw hell, why don't we just forget about it and go play some golf."

It was an offer none of us could refuse. And so, approximately 300 yards short of the intersection I now know to be signposted "Ladybank," I U-turned my Vauxhall Viva and headed back to St. Andrews.

Up to the first tee of the Old Course we marched and lo and behold there was an open slot. Today this would never happen, and even back in July of 1983 it was relatively astounding. What was even more remarkable, however, was that upon learning of our good fortune, all four underpaid and overprivileged members of the golf media immediately reached into our pockets and not only paid to play but sprung for caddies. (My colleagues, I assumed, had the same intention I had -- to do some creative writing at expense account time.)

Four blissful hours later, we were tramping back into the lobby of the hotel, bags over our shoulders, when suddenly we found ourselves the focus of some highly unwanted attention. There, in the center of the lobby, standing in a semicircle and looking directly at us, were Nicklaus, Ballesteros, and Sheridan, in the middle of a press conference with our invited colleagues, including the BBC, with its klieg lights glaring and cameras rolling. Absolutely horror-struck, I moved into "perp walk" mode, shoulders hunched, head bowed, hand shading brow.

Old Furman had no such compunctions. Striding straight up to Nicklaus, he said, "Jack, we're awfully sorry we didn't come to watch you boys down at Ladybank, but you see, we were able to get a tee time on the Old Course!"

It was during that illicit round that I hit the fateful slice of my life. Understand now, the home hole at the Home of Golf lies seamlessly side by side with the opening hole, comprising a target the approximate breadth and contour of Nebraska. But as any devout golfer knows, the Old Course is not just a golf course, it's a shrine -- golf's version of the Vatican -- and number 18 is its culmination, its Sistine Chapel, the last place you want to demonstrate a proclivity to stray.

Moreover, running along the entire right edge of the hole is a sturdy, gleaming white fence, marking out of bounds, and just beyond that fence, across a narrow street, is a row of stately slate-roofed townhouses, their bulging bay-windowed facades adding considerably to the intimidation of the final tee shot. Yes, when a golfer puts his peg in the ground at number 18 on the Old, every fiber in his being tells him "Don't go right."

Which of course I did, with a swing so convulsive that, from the moment the ball left the clubface all four players and all four caddies knew it was gone, destined for not grass but glass -- or steel or granite or human flesh or some calamitous combination of them all.

Curiously, however, it just disappeared, diving without bounce or clank into the nether regions of the gray stone neighborhood. I never found that ball. But while searching for it I did find something else -- a For Sale sign. Incredibly, the bottom two floors of one of those townhouses -- 2,000 square feet of private residence -- was on the market, and fate had drawn me (actually sliced me) to it.

On Monday morning, instead of heading down to Birkdale with my cohorts, I phoned the listing broker and asked the price. When I heard it, my heart skipped a beat -- £45,000, or about $65,000 at the then prevailing exchange rate. The previous owner, an elderly woman, had died earlier that year and left everything in the hands of lawyers and accountants who had been instructed to accept the first offer to hit the asking price. In six weeks, no such offer had been received.

I took a quick walk through the place and that evening called home for permission. My wife, although a confirmed nongolfer, had been to St. Andrews and I knew she liked the town.

"The interior's not in great shape," I said, "but that's okay -- the layout is ideal, the rooms are big, the ceilings are high, and there are four working fireplaces. Besides, we're never going to actually live here -- it's an investment. We can rent it to students to help with the carrying costs, and in the summers it'll be free if we want to visit. I know it's a chunk out of our savings, honey, but wait until you see the view."

Happily, she didn't need much selling. And so, two months later in a solicitor's office in Dundee, George and Libby Peper became the proud owners of 9A Gibson Place, St. Andrews, Fife.

Copyright © 2006 by George Peper