Gullane’s enduring, quirky test
● A member’s perspective on why East Lothian’s ‘linksy’ course will provide a tough examination
For more than 20 years, the PGA Tour in America thrived on the back of a simple slogan: “These guys are good”. While it goes without saying professional athletes in any sport need to be “good” at what they do to earn a living, there’s an exceptional tie in Scottish golf between players and galleries driven by a shared passion for the mystery of the game.
You can’t ask a football fan to join in training with Brazil or a tennis enthusiast to knock up with Roger Federer, but a club golfer can partner a major winner in a pro-am and, thanks to the handicap system, walk shoulder to shoulder alongside a champion.
If the connection between professionals and spectators, who mostly play golf themselves, was in danger of being severed during last month’s US Open at Shinnecock, where the organisers seemed intent on embarrassing the game, those who attend the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open at Gullane can look forward to renewing that bond of understanding.
The European Tour will ensure the course, which is looking and playing very “linksy” after a warm, dry spell, is set up on the generous side of fair. The 12-under-par winning total set by Rickie Fowler in 2015 is likely to be matched unless the wind blows. Only on Sunday three years ago, when the breeze got up, did the stroke average of 70.21 exceed par. In Saturday’s calmer conditions, 68.99 was the going rate and the first round saw Thorbjorn Olesen return 63. (The capricious nature of the game, incidentally, saw the Dane take 14 strokes more in the second round and miss the cut.)
For those of us privileged to be members of Gullane golf club, the experience of hosting the Scottish Open for the second time will be all the richer for knowing some of the risks and rewards attached to playing the course on a regular basis and watching the world’s best players attempt to answer the same questions.
Mark you, when the contenders for the title drive the ball around 300 yards, hit most greens in regulation and average 28 putts or fewer per round, the answers tend to be more straightforward.
Still, Gullane, which opened in 1884, is not without enduring challenges for the great and the good, as was demonstrated when the club last hosted the elite.
Like all classic links, the East Lothian course is defended by wind and sand. While the breeze blows at the whim of the deities, the 124 bunkers that pepper the layout are permanent. And you can’t play Gullane from the traps.
An added complication arises from the links twisting up and down the undulating terrain of Gullane Hill. This quirk adds elevation changes and uneven lies to the test.
The opening hole on the championship lay-out (the second on Gullane No 1) is daunting in this respect.
0 Rickie Fowler with the Gullane greenkeepers after his 2015 win. Mere mortals teeing up in the club medal are relieved, often as not, to walk off with a bogey on this 390-yard par 4 that plays uphill into the prevailing wind from teeing ground which faces the fairway at an angle.
If the tee shot is pushed right, the ball will be above the player’s feet for the second, while a pull will place it below. Anything hooked or sliced is in deep rough. The second shot to a long, narrow green is no bargain either. You don’t need to miss by much to find trouble. Last time, Martin Laird took 7 here while former Open champion David Duval carded 8. Oliver Farr signed for 10 and Jimmy Walker, a US PGA champion, took 6 twice.
Not that the opening hole proved the most difficult to par. The par-4 11th recorded a stroke average of 4.24. This was unsurprising since the members play this hole as a par 5.
Of all the long par 4s on the composite – a lay-out which features 16 holes from No 1 (dropping the first and the 17th ) and two, the seventh and eighth, from No 2 – it was the 471-yard seventh hole which caused the pros puzzlement with the most number of double bogeys. This may have been as much a trick of the design as the fault of the players since the green offered no safe haven