A great match, halved, at Dunbar Links, with a setting sun to toast to was a fitting way to wrap up our Scottish golfing exploits for the strange year of 2020.
With this round at Dunbar we’d completed play in our East Lothian swing that spanned nearly two weeks and six separate links.
The “Golf Coast” was the last piece in our puzzle of playing all the major regions of Scottish Links.
In 2016 we spent a full week in the Kingdom of Fife and then another among the links of the northern Firths: Moray, Cromartie and Dornoch.
In 2018 we fell in love with the courses in Campbeltown after our great turn at St. Andrews Old Course.
Last year we toured the coasts of Angus and Aberdeenshire and, once again, Moray, before heading to new territory along the Ayrshire coast, the islands of Arran and Islay, culminating in a return to the Mull of Kintyre.
Looking back, I couldn’t pick a favorite region, one over the other. Each is distinctive in its own right yet all share a common thread – the disarming simple complexity of links golf.
Hungry and still thirsty, we beat feet to The Duck hoping to arrive before the kitchen closed.
We were in luck and even managed to finagle two stools at the bar. Two weeks of walking the links and dunes land all over this country had worn me out.
Saturday night at The Duck had the place bouncing with good cheer, or craick, as the locals call it. A number of patrons were climbing up the bar stool, some quite shakily, to have a go at the putting challenge.
Malcolm, the owner, came by and asked about our day.
“I’ve got something to show you, lads, follow me, if you will”.
He took us back around the far corner of the bar into a cozy nook that held a few tables.
“This here is a favorite haunt of the local characters. From time to time I’ll put up a picture of deserving folks.”
He pointed to a spot on the wall, “Welcome to The Duck Wall of Fame.”
And there we were – immortalized within an 8X10 frame, Jeff and George, shoulder to shoulder.
Surprised and grateful, we stood the bar to a round of drinks. How else to celebrate our celebrity!
The literature of golf is rife with the metaphor of golf as life. I’m not convinced that comparison holds. But if there is any merit to it, if any case can be made for that claim, it can only come from a contemplation of links golf.
In parkland golf, the typical American style of golf course, I don’t think it holds.
A usual parkland course is a layout well defined: by tree lined fairways, or visible water hazards, or fairway bunkers placed strategically but mostly, if not always, playable. The course lays out before without surprise, it might be difficult and challenge all your skills but it doesn’t throw anything unexpected your way.
Links golf is so very different. You can stand on a tee and wonder where the hole is?
There are no dead flat fairways, few level lies.
The fairway bunkers are hidden and unlikely to leave a lie that allows you to advance the ball toward the hole.
Humps, hillocks, mounds and muffins push balls every which way into bunkers, burns, whins, heather and gorse.
Pot bunkers both green side and elsewhere are often to small to enter or have faces that are totally vertical.
Blind shots, where a leap of faith is required, abound.
And walls, remnants of older uses, pop up in unwelcome places.
Add the wind, always present at the coast, and you have a prescription for unpredictability.
For chance to intervene.
In golf, that’s called the rub of the green.
In links golf, the rub can be very abrasive.
Yet these elements of uncertainty are exactly those that engender our deepest respect and, once in a while, confer an unusual feeling of accomplishment.
Golfer’s are hunters in pursuit of an uncatchable beast. But once in awhile we have a fleeting taste of mastery, and that’s enough.
My golf journey started thirty years ago, when my brother Jeff convinced me to take up the game. He coached and instructed me, suffering through my slow progress round after round. In golf, as in many other things, he is my guide.
2020 is a year each of us will recall with much regret. But I hope each of us will have, in spite of our shared hardship, moments that will bring us a smile in the years to come.
Our Scottish golf trip will do so for me.
With an early flight departing Edinburgh in the morning, we were packed, ready to go. Ready to pick up our routine lives again and enjoy the sweet embrace of our loved ones.
Jeff and I had charged our memory banks with enough moments to carry us through until 2021 when we’ll walk the links again.
Heads filled with memories, hearts filled with gratitude.
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