No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 577: The Ode to The Old Course

Episode Date: July 9, 2022

The Open has returned to The Old Course at St Andrews. To help get our Open week coverage started we spoke to a variety of voices in golf on what makes the home of golf so unique. From elite tour pros to mid-handicappers, writers, broadcasters and locals, we look at the course's qualities that have fascinated players for decades as well as the magic of the setting in the town of St. Andrews, the outlook for the upcoming Open and a ton more.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm going to be the right club today. Yes! That is better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sully here. Today's episode is a little different from the normal cadence. We will get to that in a second, but first, I have to tell you about our friends.

At Roeback, we've been wearing their gear for a while right now. I'm wearing their gear right now. I wore their gear yesterday. I will probably wear it again tomorrow. I can confidently say it is the best feel of a shirt, a hoodie or whatever that I've ever worn. I've been in a lot of golf tournaments lately. I've seen their stuff everywhere.

I was out in Oregon, saw their stuff all over the airport. Their performance polo fit much better than your typical boxy polos or four-way stretch is next level material Supersoft stays wrinkle free. The founders went through 20 iterations on the collar alone to ensure it keeps its shape, doesn't get in the way your golf swing. The performance Q-Zips, I just put one in my suitcase. I'm getting ready to head out for the weekend. They are soft. They are the definition of versatile and perfect for a cool

morning on the course or an evening around town. And lastly, the performance hoodies, the stretchiest softest hoodies in golf. Maybe the most comfortable performance hoodie on the entire market. And again, the sneaky thing about them, you can wear them multiple times, you don't even need to wash them. They're gaining traction big time, and you can use code NLU at roback.com for 20% off your first order. That's roback.com, r-h-o-b-a-c-k dot com, 20% off polo's Q-zips, hoodies and teas with code NLU. My fascination with the old course at St. Andrews goes back in least 20 years.

I don't remember the first time I played it in a video game, but I do remember waking up early to watch Tiger Woods at the 2000 Open Championship. For a 13-year-old, the idea of traveling to a foreign country was unfathomable. To me, these players were so far away from the world I knew they might have been playing on the moon. Justin Thomas has similar memories as a kid. I remember obviously like you know Tiger's Three Wood into what is it 14 where you know he's saying to Stevie is that what you're talking about?

He's like yeah that's what I'm talking about. I just want to make sure that's what I'm talking about. You know that kind of whole exchange and obviously watch that that replay of million times. I don't I just always remember as a kid waking up in the middle of the night or in the morning to watch the open. The place just looked so wild. It's a golf course in the middle of a town. The holes are

not defined very well. The greens are enormous. With huge undulations, there's guys putting from 50 yards off the green. It's brown, not green like the courses I know in the United States. I watched and watched as Tiger picked the course apart, driving par fours, two putting for birdies. Looking back, you realize how rare it is that the guy that's supposed to win the tournament actually does it with ease. Yet at the same time, even at that young age, I could appreciate we were watching history.

We were watching the greatest talent the game had ever seen at the home of golf. The old course is not necessarily a great fit for the modern game, it's short, it's funky, it's not great for viewing in person, it's even a little bit dangerous as two of the holes actually criss-cross, yet it marks what I would consider to be the best possible crossover between the professional game and what makes golf my favorite pastime. The vent diagram, of course, is that are interesting to watch the pros play yet accessible to any golfer that wants to play does not have a very big overlap. And the fact that this happens at the birthplace of the game is what helps take the old course to an entirely different level.

I've actually struggled over the years to come up with a proper way to describe how special this place is. So I reached out to several people that have experienced there, either competing, writing, commentating, living in the area, or simply playing it. I've collected their thoughts here within this podcast episode, which I'm calling the ode to the Old Course. My fascination with St. Andrews reached a fever pitch in 2008. My dad returned home from this foreign land that I'd still had never even come close to visiting, and the mystique all of a sudden just felt a lot more real. Other than reservations at an Airbnb, we did not have any tea times and he was living in Germany at the time. So he met me at the Edinburgh Airport after flying all night and picked me up and

we drove immediately to St Andrews. And by the time we got there, it was probably two o'clock in the afternoon and we went directly to the starters hut and this was in April so there was still a fair amount of daylight and just inquired about getting a tea time and sure enough they had an opening in the very last tea time of the day. I struggled around my head around this. You just walk up to the home of golf and can walk out and play it or get the sweet talk, the starter? Well, the conversation with the starter was pretty matter of fact. He said, your laddies are lucky.

There's an opening in the last D time of the day and you're welcome to go. And he said that you're going to be playing with a guy that is trying to make it on the European tour. So we played with him and then he joined us at Dunviggin when we were done with our round and we talked with him and then by the time we got back to the Airbnb and again this was in 2008 so messaging was not all that obni present. So we had to wait until we got back to check email and then we had the first tea time of the next day because we had entered the lottery to get the tea

time the next day. So here I'd been in St Andrews for less than 24 hours and had already played the old course twice. I sat on this story in the hope of one day setting foot on the old course for seven years. One difficulty was the fact that I'd never even been to Europe, so again, visualizing playing at this seemingly mythical place just seemed so far-fetched. But in the summer of 2015, I found myself waiting outside the starters' pavilion at 430 in the morning. I'd stopped by that same starters' hut the previous day to see if we would have the same luck my dad had seven years earlier.

There were no more tea times available in that afternoon, but the starter told me of some opportunities the next morning. And I convinced my three buddies that we could beg our way onto the old course and we did exactly that. When the doors to the pavilion opened up at 6 a.m., the starter informed us of a freak rarity.

The entire Forsem at 630 had canceled. We were already resigned to the fact that if we were gonna play the old course, we were gonna get separated into different groups. Yet a once in a lifetime opportunity to play the old course with a full force of him had presented itself. The problem was we did not bring our clubs down to the starter's head. We were planning on going back to bed once we had our tea time set. So we took off in a full sprint to the car, whipped around the ancient streets of St Andrews,

sprinted into our dorm, threw on any clothes we could find, grabbed the clubs and headed straight back to the tee. I dropped the three of them off so they could claim our spot and I raced down to the car park and took off in a dash to make sure we didn't miss the tee type. The caddies laughed and cheered as I ran by and I gave them a celebratory fist pump. I didn't even have time to get nervous or even catch my breath. There we stood on the same tee box that Tiger Woods unleashed a vicious club twirl off of just 15 years prior and teed off on the old course at St Andrews. The legend of the old course had come to life.

Everyone that's been there has a story about their first time playing it. Here's Justin Thomas. My first professional tournament was the Dunhill links. And first off, we get there and I found out a couple of weeks prior that I was in the Dunhill. And my partner was going to be Seth Law, who, you know, I'd heard a lot of great things, but I've come to find out is obviously an unbelievable dude. And in terms of when you're getting your first pro start and going to play in the Dunhill links and a pro am, you can't really get much better than that as a start. So we get there and it's just a nasty, nasty day.

I mean, it's rain and sideways. I mean, it's a day where obviously anybody from the States wouldn't play. And my dad and I are just kind of looking at each other. He's caddy and forming and we're like, I should probably go play in this. Like I never play in at home. This isn't just something that I would normally do. So we're like, let's just go play a little loop just to maybe get used to the condition. So first time I ever played golf at St. Andrews, driver off one and I had six ironed into the green and I hooped it for a two. It's the first time I ever played the whole. It was unbelievable. So I was just like, I don't really see what the hype is all about. This one is pretty easy, but yeah, so it's funny. That was the first time I replied it and then as the week went on,

the draw came out. My first t-shot that week, first t-shot as professional was number one, it's saying Andrews, so it doesn't get much better than that. Here's Iona Steven, a commentator for Sky Sports. The old course is like a very complex and complicated character. It's like something out with a mythical story book, I suppose, and I imagine the old course is kind of a bit like an old man really that's lived a very long life and you never know what side of bed he's going to get out of. And some morning, you might meet him on a bright sunny day where there's not a cloud in the sky and barely a breath of wind. And it seems in that moment in St Andrews when you're there standing on the first tea,

everything in the world is in sync. And the old man is in a very good mood. And then there's other days where he's out on the wrong side of bed and the wind is blowing a hilly as we would say in Scotland and it's a four-club winds and you're hitting driver and you probably need to consider driver off the deck for the second at the first. By the time you make the turn you've used both sets of water proofs you've got in your bag, your three four gloves and your umbrella stopped working. So you never really know what you're gonna get. One of the many great things about the old courses

is that so many people get the opportunity to experience it so intimately. It's only natural when you're churning out a full T-sheet day after day after day. In Iona is one of the fortunate few that has pulled off what may be the ultimate golf hustle. So I was lucky to study at the University of St Andrews and I suppose that's where my relationship with the old course starts. Obviously I had heard of this mysterious place and the the golden links tickets, which meant I could play

all seven courses of the links, including the old course, for roughly a hundred pounds a year. And as you can imagine, as a student, it was 90% gold, 5% socialising, and 5% work, I think, fun being generous to the work. So it was a pretty good life. And I think, you know, I certainly didn't appreciate how lucky I was, and I think that's part of the beauty of being a student at St Andrews is that you have that useful naivety and you don't realize that rocking out of bed with a hangover onto the first year of the old course

is something that people would give their right arm for. And as I've gone on in my life and later down the road, I've gone on in my life and later down the road, I bought a house in St Andrews and lucky now to more or less call it home when I'm not traveling all over the world, you know, following the tours. And I appreciate it more and more just how lucky I was and how lucky we are to be able to go to the old course and go to some boundaries and how special the old course is. You can ask 10 different people what they love the most about the old course and get 10 different answers. Golf

course architects historians and aficionados all rave about it like Jeff Shackleford. Is the old course the best course in the world. From the perspective of strategic architecture, it is, by far, it's not even close. I understand why some people don't care for it or would not want to play it every day or would not see it as perfect or ideal. But it's kind of astounding to think that in all this time nobody has created a golf course design that has even a shred of the complexity that it has. There's just nothing like it in terms of the wind shifts and where you need to play to depending on the day and where you are in a match or where you are in the tournament and it's constantly changing. It's held up to technology in some ways, not all, but it's required tease off on the other golf courses to do it and

questionable whole locations perhaps in the open. But the point is it challenges the best players in the world in ways they're not used to. Also, almost unanimously in favor, some of the best players in the world in ways they're not used to. Also, almost unanimously in favor, some of the best players in the history of the game. I met a guy who was a very successful executive and he is a friend of Tiger and a friend of his played there on a trip just a few years ago and at his get- in Vegas, you know, they went to him, they went, you know, we went, we get it, the town, it's cool, but we, like, what's the deal? We just didn't, the golf course, well, we don't understand. Why is it your favorite golf course in the world?

And Tiger just looked at him and said, you're not good enough to understand. And then he let out a big laugh. And they didn't take it the wrong way. But that, that it is able to get people like Tiger and Jack Nicholson, Bobby Jones to tell you it's their favorite, to tell you it's the one that makes them think and work the most. I think speaks to just what's going on there. It's it's so unusual.

I'm going to steal a few quotes that Jeff put together in his newsletter, The Quadrilateral. Bobby Jones said there is always a way at St. Andrews, although it is not always the obvious way, and in trying to find it, there is more to be learned on this British course than in playing a hundred ordinary American golf courses. Peter Thompson, if there is one part of the game not right, no matter how you try your hardest to protect it, the old course will find it. Alistair McKinsey, I doubt if even in a hundred years time a course will be made which has such interesting strategic problems in which creates such enduring and increasing pleasurable excitement and varied shots.

Desmond Murehead, no one who has ever played the old courses ever the same again. Bernard Darwin, it is a course of constant risks and constant opportunities of recovering of infinitely varied and to the of recovering, of infinitely varied, and to the stranger unorthodox shots. And Bobby Jones, I could take everything out of my life except my experiences at St. Andrews, and I would still have a rich, full life. The nostalgia that comes with the old course is easy to understand without even visiting. I'd heard many people refer to it as their favorite course, but figured it was the novelty

of the home of golf that contribute greatly to this affinity. It took a few loops around the course to recognize it, but once I did, the light bulb went off for me, excluding all of the history and the setting and all the tingly feelings the course gives you, the actual golf course might just be the best in the world. Here's Jeff Shackleford again. If you set aside kind of your preconceived notions of what a golf course should be and you really just focus on the round and if you You just need to hit a few shots out there the way you wanted the way maybe the caddy told you to play them and Experience that thrill you just realize how fun it is the shots you get to play on the ground and the way the contours

Just work. You know, they're just they work. And they, if you use them right, and if there's no feeling quite like it. A quick break to check them with our friends at Woop, the personalized digital fitness and health coach and official fitness wearable of the PGA and LPGA tours. They've got an all new four.0 version of their product. It is smaller, smarter, designed with new biometric tracking, including skin temperature, blood oxygen, and more.

You've heard me say this many times on this podcast, it helps me make better decisions when I know exactly whatever I'm doing to my body, what the output is, what the effect is, what it does to my heart rate, what it does to my heart rate variability, what it does to my sleep patterns, it all affects the way you feel on the next day. It gives you a great report to see how well your body has recovered. It gives you incentive to actually go to bed on time. It tells you you should go to bed at this time. If you're gonna wake up at this time,

if you want to peak tomorrow, if you want to just get by tomorrow, here's how much you need to sleep. It gamifies your health, and it really is a helpful, helpful tool to help make better decisions. The all new waterproof device is free when you sign up for a Woop4.0 membership.

For any members, if you have six months left of membership on your account, you can upgrade now and get the 4.0 for free. And right now, Woop is offering 15% off when you use the code NLU15 at checkout. Go to Woop.com, whop.com, enter NLU15 at checkout to save 15%. Back to the pot. The out and back nature of the course works in a really unique way with holes 2 through 8 and 12 through 16 all playing to double greens. The sum of the two holes in the double greens always adds up to 18 with 2 and 16 sharing a massive, massive potting area, 3 and 15, 4 and 14, and so on.

The fairways align with random humps and hillocks, devastating bunkers get their some of the widest fairways in the world as you're also sharing landing areas with the holes going the opposite direction. On top of this, the turf is some of the best in the world and it's incredibly resilient considering the amount of play it receives and the ground dictates everything you do. Well, some of it's just that the looks from the teas are not very great or what we're used to in modern golf. They're not definitive.

And when the caddy tells you, with today's pin, you better go on the second tea, aim at the, whatever, almost the corner of the old course hotel, you're like, what in the hell is this? And, but that ends up being sort of the beauty of it, is that the whole locations dictate your strategy. Sometimes it's the wind, a lot of the time it's the wind. And it's different every day.

It checks off all the things you kind of hope for in a course that it's never the same. It makes you think, it makes you just try to skirt a ball by a bunker or in a certain spot. And the more you know it, the more you are aware of those places you need to be, that is something that is very hard to achieve in golf architecture. And not many people have. Because of how firm the ground plays, how vast the options are for whole locations, the severity of the bunkers, your face with just an excess of options

on how to get your ball close to the hole. It's just kind of what you would do. It's a bizarre parcel because it starts at the town and goes out through this one stretch and why that one stretch appealed more than others. We'll never know, but you look at the contours and that stretch, they are the most amazing contours shaped by the ocean, the

floor, the ocean a long time ago. The other courses don't quite have the incredible amount of contours and it's just another one of those things that obviously they recognized playing it. It was more fun when there were interventions by the ground. Some of the recommendations your caddy will give you a sound insane, but it really does take experience that you can't find in a yardage book to know the proper places to leave the ball on a certain day. That's something.

Honestly, I've kind of learned over the years it for myself at open championships is, you know, most places that we play, you go play one practice round and you have an idea like, okay, I'm going to hit a three wood or a five wood off this tee and it's going to be kind of somewhere in this little area. And then, you know, you want to miss it over here. Whereas there could be a chance where I could hit a six or seven iron off of one tee at St. Andrews to stay short of the burn. Whereas the first day I ever played it, I had driver six iron.

So you have to take each day for what it is. And almost for someone like me, not having a lot of memory there could end up working in my advantage because I don't have those past memories of the course playing substantially different than it might, you know, that could be something that helps me out.

But the idea that you have to think about every shot, the consequences and sometimes those places you need to go are so unusual you know some days it's when the 12th's drivable you want to drive it over the green and chip back you know things like that that are just so counterintuitive to what people are used to doing in golf and it's managed to charm essentially every great player in the game they've all been there and the only one that hasn't is Ben Hogan. And if there was anybody who would have absolutely devoured what it is all about, it's him, which is kind of ironic and sad. An example of this that

still blows my mind to this day was on my third loop of the old course in 2017. My caddy Brett put a three-wood in my hand on the 16th hole and had me aim into the third fairway. Walking to the ball, I was still very confused as to why we did this, but when we arrived, I had a perfectly clear view of the back right hole location. It's a route I would have never chosen on my own and had I played the day prior or the day after it would not have been the proper play.

Now multiply that out by 18 holes. That's the exercise the old course puts you through. And I've given this a lot of thought and what I always come back to is that the bunkering at the old course is what defines the strategy. There's so penal that they must be avoided at all costs yet they're hungry to gobble up anything that's offline. At the same time, you must take them on to have any chance at scoring. Here's Justin Thomas. The bunkers at the Open Championship definitely differ than week to week on the PGA tour.

And I think that's, that's not a bad thing. I mean, they are that for a reason. And I think, and it's not because of bad sand or poorly manicured or anything. It's just because they're deep in their penal. And every single open championship, everybody basically at the start of the week decides, okay, what am I going to do? Am I going to lay up short of these bunkers? Or am I going to challenge these bunkers?

And there's no right or wrong answer, but you better be committed to one of them because they definitely play as a penalty. Some courses more than others, and some shots more than others. But at the end of the day, you're going to have some shots over the course of a week where you just kind of have to, you know, man up and take them on and execute. Let's take the ninth hole for example. It's listed at 370 yards, but it's dribble for most players when it's not into the win. It's a wide, wide fairway that is also

shared with the tenth hole. Yet the end hole bunker sits precariously just slightly left of center at 290 yards in the tee. And just 26 yards to the left of that sits another bunker. If you can thread it between these two bunkers, you can easily run one up to the putting surface. sits another bunker. If you can thread it between these two bunkers, you can easily run one up to the putting surface.

But if you miss slightly, you might be pitching out sideways out of one of these bunkers. And on a day where it's into the wind, you gotta think about another bunker, short of that one on your layup. It's like this on repeat. There's a certain freedom to the old course experience

that you just will never feel when you stand up on a tee with a 25 yard wide fairway with water on the left, bunkers on the right, there's just never anyone telling you where you need to hit it. You're free to choose your own adventure and your own route to the hole, and it's just so engaging to the mind. Sometimes I fear that I overhyped certain places in my head, and when I return, it's all going to come crashing down, but it's not hyperbole to say that each time I go back to the old course, my stance on it feels strengthened. I've traveled a fair amount of the world.

I've gotten to have a lifetime's worth of incredible experiences, both on and off the golf course. And I love my wife and my family very, very much, but I can confidently say that there isn't anything I'd rather do on Earth than play golf on the old course. Here's Rue McDonald from the Scottish Golf podcast. But there's nothing like it in the world of golf. You and I have been lucky to travel around the world and play golf and nothing is like playing

on that first tee of the old course or walking up 18 in the setting sun around the old buildings. There's been tangible feeling whenever you place in onroost. You still have to get acquainted with it. You still have to get comfortable with certain shots and you still have to pull off some really balsy shots given the OB, given the gorse that if you take a risky line and you don't pull it off.

And so that's the beauty of it, that those elements of the test are still there. You wish they didn't have to stick pins in weird spots or tees on the other golf courses. But I find the tees on the other course to be kind of more of a minor thing at this point, probably after writing that article and realizing Holy cow,

there is literally nothing like this, where the world championship of a sport can go back to the place where it started. So it's kind of, yeah, it's worth it. The challenge that the old course will provide is a test of patience above anything else. And that patience will often be playing within oneself because it's not a course that you can necessarily overpower. And it requires that a course that you can necessarily overpower and it requires that beautiful combination that links so often does of imagination, skill and will. It's the full package. If you've got the brute force, well that's great, but do you have the mental

resilience and the imagination to create a shot when you're just out of position. And I think often the obvious choice for these guys will be, you know, the power shot will be to try and take things on in an aggressive way. And I personally believe that the champion golf of the year on Sunday of 150th open will be someone a player that has the ability to harness the elements and most of all has imagination and the ability to play with that in their hands. I understand why people struggle with what the visual is on a lot of the tease but once you get over that and you feel kind of free to go after it, it's just spectacular and of course It's just spectacular.

And of course, there's just something about the town looming in the distance. You know, it's just sort of a movie set, really, in a lot of ways. It's worth noting that the old course is far from the most difficult course in the open road up. And without wind straight up, it's pretty damn easy for the pros.

There's challenges of plenty, but the wind accentuates those challenges greatly. And there's a very good chance we see some ridiculously good scoring at the open this year. You know, I mean, if we get sunny 70 degree days with not much wind, I mean, we're going to shoot really, really low. And I think anybody who knows golf can tell you that because that's just how it is these days.

But at the same time, if it gets very firm, very baked out, I mean, you're just going to have pins that you can't get close to the hole And you're gonna have to realize that you're not realistically gonna be able to hold and That's what I'm excited for because you just kind of don't know what you're gonna get And you have to get there and just take it for what it is and I think those guys like it so much because All those open championship Blink's golf courses are Shop makers and ball strikers pair of nices and, and we all know that those two are known as that.

You know, the old course, everyone's talking about, you know, the score being a concern, I think, for the RNA, but, you know, every like scores needs the weather conditions. And if the weather conditions blow like you know, they get on a nice, breezy day in St. Andrews, then you can find yourself, you know, a bunker that you've flown over by 50 yards. The next day you're trying to lay up short of. There's a reason why you're not allowed golf carts on the old course in Andres is because I think people would end up driving into them. A lot of these bunkers are, you can't see off the tee and they're heading by humps or hollows. So yeah, it's going to rely on the weather conditions and if we get the weather conditions, you'll see, you know, a variation of

golf shots required to plot your way around, which, you know, round a golf course, that isn't going to be too long for the players, but will require, you know, accuracy off the tea and some strategy. Certainly, they are a refreshing approach than the regular tour stops that we see weekend, week out. The golf course actually closes 70 to June, so you've got a month of preparation that goes into the course. What I'm hearing at the moment is that the course, we've had a very cold spring. Some courses nearby have actually suffered then had to close because of the cold spring. But I think the golf course, if it gets a couple of more warmer weeks, then it'll be in prime condition going into the open. It's also worth noting

that we know of at least one hole that will definitely present plenty of difficulty. The 17th the road hole, probably one of the most famous par4s in golf, I'm hearing reports of some thick juicy rough down the left hand side. You know, that's probably not intentional per se, I think there's probably been some bad rough management in the past, but you're looking at certainly thicker rough down the left hand side, which if you've got thick rough down the left and you can hardly advance your ball onto to the green and you've got out of bounds right it makes it a very difficult a long longish par four. The approach shot is I think you might agree Chris it's one of the most enjoyable shots you could hit if you're on the fairway to a green that feeds right

to left if you could get a ball running up the front of the green on the right hand side it'll meander around past the road hole bunker to a very narrow sliver of green at the top before it runs over the back and onto the road. And then obviously balls that roll onto the road inevitably roll up against the wall which is the bounds boundary which will be stacked full of thousands of thousands of fans who will have the best seat in the house to hopefully watch the best players compete against each other. And the whole final stretch is from the 12th, from the 11th, really, right through that

back nine when the town sneaks closer and closer to you. That's for me, is the best part of the course and the best part of the experience of the old courses, is when you're starting to creep towards the town and without doubt 17, probably the best hole for me on the course. Then you roll over to the final T, the town that has gotten bigger and bigger

with each shot you've played on this nine is now right in front of you. The 18th and any open-ups in Andrews epitomizes what is great about the game of golf. Anybody can essentially, any golfer can play the old course in Andrews and whenever you're lucky enough to get over here to Scotland and to play golf in Scotland, to play the famous courses that your heroes have played. I don't think we'd probably celebrate that enough and the open championship is a celebration

of that. It's open to anybody and the chance for us to all to watch the best players play a course that we've played I think is pretty special. In terms of the 18th, it's nerve wracking. I know the fairways wide, but the amount of balls I see rattle around the hotel there up at the right hand side. I don't think the players will have that problem, but it's certainly not an easy Bernie chance for everybody. I think we saw that with

with speed in the final hole of 2015 where he maybe should have got into the playoffs. It's going to prove an exciting finish to the open championship, no matter whatever the situation is, but I always find that approach shot to be tricky. I know people get close to the green, but you've still got 100 and something yards with a wedge to a sloped green, so you know, inevitably both spin off and then it's about controlling your spin for that second shot. But the whole spectacle, the iconic image of the grandstand behind the green, you know the streets being lined with with spectators both inside the ropes and outside the ropes. I think it'll be make for a you know really special and potentially an emotional very well

for some of our favourite golfers as well. You know, who's to say Tiger won't wave goodbye to the fans on 18. But whatever is the case, the 18th and the, the old course in Andrews is a special place in the world of golf. Another thing I love about this place is that it fits all styles of play. It's adored by low and high handicappers alike. It's just fun. It's like a play. It's adored by low and high handicappers alike. It's just fun. It's like a playground. And it's such a golf cliché, but you never play it the same and you hit shots on the

old course in Andres that you've never hit before. You hit a hundred yard pots that you would think, right, I'm never hitting that shot, but you know, whether it's the caddy or whether it's just the way it lies, you find yourself hitting these most ridiculous shots. I feel lucky to play it probably a dozen times and certain aspects of the course might feel on their well-menging first time round and then by the seventh, eighth time playing the course, you realise that makes sense. I just think such a complexity to the course and the way the holes were designed, it does

take a few rounds to get used to and familiar with. And, you know, the funnest of the course grows every time you play a. If you follow golf, it's special because you've seen it so much. And then being the birthplace of golf makes it extra special. And then just a great walk. The views are fantastic. Nestle right there within the center of town, and having the North Sea there beside you, and all of that, and just the ease of which it is to play.

Even for a mid-high handicap, or it's just an easy course and a fun course to play, it doesn't beat you up. It's just an easy course and a fun course to play. It doesn't beat you up. It's just the bar of hand on his phrase, it's golf as it's meant to be. I tried my best to isolate the conversation around the town of St. Andrews itself to its own section here, but you can see how the setting of this course permeates through the entire experience from the discussion you've already heard. There's a vibe around the whole area

that is just so welcoming. I was actually cool. The first time I legitimately saw it in person was on a Sunday when they're closed and it's essentially a park. Everyone is just walking around the course. People are walking their dogs on the course. You're having picnics in the 18th fairway,

like just random people going in the road hole bunker. like I just couldn't fathom and believe it. And then obviously walking around the town, you know, going to eat in the Dunvig and it just everything about it was so so special. You know, there's kind of this handful of golf courses or places in the world you can go to when you kind of know it before you get there and that's definitely one of them. There's a mystery about St Andrews that is hard to find anywhere else in the world. Full stop. Let alone the world of golf. I think it's something that residents of the town visitors to the town have pondered a lot. Why is this place? Why is St Andrew so unique? Why is it a setting that makes people fall in love of a very deep passionate kind of love?

And I think it's a combination of things. I think part of it is to do with the eclectic mix of people you get in the town, you get students, you get tourists, and you get residents, and these three different groups of people come together to create an energy, and you place it in its geography, which is in the East Nuclephite, and it's really only accessible by boat, car, or really that's it, because there's no train that can get you there. There's no landing strip, you know, really in St Andrews, There's not an airport of International scale so I think it's difficult to get to so people feel like they come on this pilgrimage to St Andrews and by the time they get there, they realize it's a really small time and

The energy is amplified because of the scale of it is very human. It's not like it's spread out over a large city. It's all compacted into the wee cobbled streets. And you're bumping into, you know, Tom Watson as you go down the street and then you see, you know, literally tiger wood. You never know who you might bump into in the town of St Andrews. And it's all there. And it comes like this cauldron of energy and fire and electricity and just pure magic. And people go away with a huge smile on their face. Just being there to experience the town. If you get to go and I've told people not the greatest spectator course, but even if you can just go for a day if you're in the area or

you're on a golf trip and you can break away to just experience walking around the town. The people you run into, I mean I spent one morning at Jim Nance and I talked for like a half hour. I was just, I was walking down the street to the course and he was going to get a coffee and you run into people, you see all sorts of yeah, Nick Price and Justin Leonard were having a beer at the Don Vegan last time and just kind of soaking up the atmosphere, that connection of the town, to the tournament, and the course, again, there's just nothing even remotely close to it.

If you just had the university by itself, you'd have a prosperous town, but you factor in, you know, tens and tens of thousands of golfers from all over the world coming in and spending their money. The place is alive, you know, from March, April, right through to then October, you'll see it, the place full of students and golfers. And there's a real energy to the place. Again, it's that intangible. There's loads of great restaurants, coffee shops, bookshops. And, you know, no matter what street corridor you turn, you're going to see somebody with a set of golf clubs. And for me, that's one of the, what makes it out of

special? And we use that phrase, phrase, home of golf, but golf lives and breathes throughout the town, whether it's through the locals or the people that pass through. How I describe what it's like for the open coming to the Ds as a resident. Not really Chris, no, it's impossible to describe it. It's like nothing I've ever seen in front of my eyes. They have built a city in St Andrews with the infrastructure that they've had to create for the 150th open. There are near 300,000 people going to be packed into the city.

And for the period that the open exists in St Andrews, it will be the third largest city in Scotland. So it's going to, you know, come alive in a way that we, we won't know until we get there until we cover the open. But as a resident, what's it been like? It's been mind blowing, just watching the way that this has been pieced together bit by bit and the effort the magnitude of this tournament it transcends golf it transcends sport and we're looking at a week that will be remembered for the rest of time.

We get to watch the world's best players determine the champion golf for the year. Essentially, the place where golf started. St Andrews is where obviously we got 18 holes and out and back and things like that, but it's way more than that. The sort of soul of the game, the spirit of golf and everything that developed that made it something so much more romantic and charming and sophisticated and beautiful and eloquent and all those things came there from the contours and the ground and the spirit of the town and the people.

So that's really why it's just so incredible that we not only still have the place but then the world's best golfers get to go there and decide this championship and there is nothing comparable in the world of sports. The only thing in the UK that kind of gets close is Royal Asquit. They're racing essentially on the same track that they have since the late 1700s. It's amazing that golf has this. Scotland's the UK, St. Andrews. We've all been waiting seven years for the open to come back to St. Andrews and they're expecting record attendances and I think there'll be a real clamber for tickets. It's not quite the, it's not quite the masters, but we're

expecting people to be looking for tickets and selling tickets outside the gate. I'm already getting people asking me for tickets. So I think expect huge crowds and an amazing atmosphere and we all hope to be a memorable open. To be honest, when I set out to make this podcast, I was planning to do a deep dive into the history of St Andrews, specifically the old course. But when I dove in, I realized the only way to do it justice would be to have an entire podcast dedicated solely to this topic. Yet another amazing thing about this place is that Old Tom Morris is probably owed an entire hour alone, yet he barely garners a mention as I try to list off all the things

I love about St Andrews. And if you've gotten this far and haven't visited St. Andrews to play the old course, you may be asking how you may go about doing that. Here's Rumi Ktonor again. Yeah, the old course is a very hard T-time, as you can imagine. I can't think of another golf course in the world, take this summer, Chris, where there's already 50, 60 people queuing up from 8, 9 PM at night to try and get on. That's one way of getting on

is through the singles queue. And some of the lines you're seeing people want to play the old course every year, but especially an open year when the grandstands are up. So there's one way. There's another way, which is through the St Andrews website, St Andrews.com, and you can actually get on there now and apply for an advanced tea time, and there's a ballot system there, and you'll find out at the end of the year whether you get in or out, and then there's a small percentage of people get through that way. Another way is through the Daily ballot, which is drawn 48, 48 hours before. So imagine you're on a golf trip to Scotland and you block out three days that you're going to be in St Andrews. If you're not traveling on a Sunday, that's three chances to get out of the daily ballot,

which again, it's about a 25% chance of getting drawn out of. The final way to get on is the most expensive way, and that would be through a private tour, essentially a package through a golf travel agent. And there's 50 travel agents that are instant androos, and they'll get you an on course tea time, but they'll also put on new course, Jubilee, and then four nights on a hotel. So it'll be pretty expensive by the time you're all set and done. Yeah, you know, so Anders is a hard tea time to get, but if you want it enough, I think you'll be able to get on. And that might mean like you guys did get up really early. I think you were up at 12, 1 o'clock in the morning.

Or you can you can show up later on and see what's going on at night. You've got dark tea times. If you're in Sennander's log enough, you'll find a way whether you speak to somebody in a bar that can get you on through a local tea time, through the local ballot. There's ways and means. Another method would be just go to college in Sennander's and join the golf team and play it that way. That's another solution which is not always an option

for all of us, but if you're young enough, I'm good enough, then join us at Anders Golf Team. And the cost? The old course green fee came under some scrutiny recently when they put the prices up to 277 pounds, which in the grand scheme of things, if I compare green fees in Scotland,

turn breeze 395, Murafield's 310, and Kings barge is 346. So 270 pounds to play probably in the most, you know, certain, the most anticipated round of golf of most people's golfing lives is pretty good. At times, golf can seem a bit like a silly obsession, but St. Andrews takes any hesitation away from the time that I've dedicated in my life to this game.

It makes it all feel worthwhile in some weird way. It's going to be my fiance, Jill's first time over and she's going to come to the Scottish Open the week prior as well and then come to the Open and she's never been. So I'm really excited for her to experience it and we're staying pretty close by. So have the opportunity to kind of walk around a little bit in the afternoon evening and night. You know, it'll be something cool for me to kind of show her around, but it's just, you know, sometimes being on property is super, super late, you know, how light, you know, how light it stays there till 10, 30, 11 o'clock and being on property, not 30, 10 o'clock at night

when it's just peaceful and nobody's there. It's a pretty, pretty cool opportunity and feeling that I think I might, you know, take advantage of really in the week. And with that, I want to thank you for tuning into the Ode to the Old Course. The World Golf could really use a week like the one that's upcoming. And I think this has the possibility to be one of the great ones in our lifetimes. Cheers. Cheers Be the right club today

That's better than most Better than most I Expect anything different