The 16th Tee

An American living in Scotland, the frequent subject in long-distance calls back to friends and family, dialed in wool-socked feet at the hallway payphone of my dormitory, was the weather. I told horror stories. Summer rain could be like a shower nozzle set to straight cold. Once, after a night at the pubs, I returned to my room to discover that a wind so violent had blown open my window and deposited a dusting of sidewalk gravel on my bed (and I lived on the fourth floor). Getting dressed to play golf was like getting ready to go skiing: long underwear, fleece, waterproofs, a winter hat, mittens to wear between shots.

So when I invited my friend Ged to fly over for the 2005 British Open, to work as a grandstand marshal along with me and the other university golf team guys, I told him to pack some sweaters even though it was July. With a puffed chest told him he didn't know what he was in store for.

As meteorological fate would have it, the weather at St. Andrews that week was the most benign possible, high 80s and sunny with barely a trace of breeze, making my calls home look like a pile of bull. The week provided the only occasion in my two years there that I went swimming in the adjacent North Sea for actual pleasure, not as a lark. Under the scoring conditions, history watched as Tiger Woods shot under par every day and led every round to win at -14.

Many a purist (sadist) would've liked the professionals to battle the elements and the winner to finish at some stoic figure like +8. But that week the weather came exactly one day late.

That Monday after, I awoke to the harsh whistling of wind squeezing through the alley beneath my window. I pulled back the lone curtain. The sky was steel.

I saw Ged off at the bus station, then made the short walk to the Old Course to resume my summer of job of caddying. The cobble streets were not in their usual quaint perfection. Tumbling in the wind, or else trembling in a corner, were wine-stained plastic cups, damp cigarette butts, scrapped signage and other traces of the post-tournament revelry of some 50,000 attendees (at least that had been the figure getting thrown around). I was in fact feeling a bit bleary myself.

I was lucky to get the caddying job. With the exchange rate at 2:1, it was good to be earning some pounds to augment my stipend. I had been able to get my foot in the caddyshack door early that spring because my postgraduate class hours were minimal and the boosted tourism of an Open year made the demand for caddies great enough they'd take an American. Out of the perhaps ninety regular caddies, there was only one other American, also a student.

As a thank you for being a major sponsor of the championship, that Monday Lexus had exclusive access to the Old Course. All the Sunday hole-locations were left in place so that the company's employees might experience a greater tie with history.

The St. Andrews Links Trust has a policy that no man with more than a 24-handicap, or a woman with a 30-handicap, is allowed to play the Old Course. And this is a policy that is enforced strictly. When I had come over in September to start classes, then twenty-two years old, I wasn't a member of a club in America and so didn't keep an official Index anywhere. To get my permit to play, I had first tried printing out my NCAA scoring record (which in the high 70s wasn't stellar but at least demonstrated a certain level) from the Internet and personally delivering it with my application. But the powers that be did not accept this. In time, the pro at my father's club in the States, where I had played under his membership through my teenage years, concocted a handicap card for me and mailed it over.

I arrived at the caddyshack, and there paid into caddymaster Rick Mackenzie's weathered hand the daily £5 "work-permit fee" and took my place on the outdoor benches with the other caddies. Most were sitting with their hands in their pockets and their collars up against the cold. The chat that morning was that handicap cards were not being checked. A special waive of policy. Apparently a lot of awkward swings had been witnessed going off the 1st tee.

I can't remember the name of the fellow I caddied for that day, but I remember him as being likely worse than a 24-handicap. Sure, he was a cheerful and bright guy who didn't get mad at his blunders and wasn't afraid to poke fun at himself, which was always good. I tried to help him as best I could and I think he had an enjoyable day at my service. However, when we got to the 7th tee and there were four foursomes and their caddies, thirty-two people altogether, waiting for the 7th fairway to clear like a stuck drain, dread overcame me.

When our turn finally came, forty minutes later, my player nailed, predictably, a low hard top 50 yards into the thorny gorse bushes directly in front of the tee. He was already running low on ammunition at that point, and so I had to go in to retrieve.

The round wore on. And on and on and on. Obviously there are worse gigs, and I would hate to be perceived as a complainer, but caddying for beginners on a dehydrated, wind-trampled major championship course with Sunday pin locations on a cold day is no fun. Non-stop raking of bunkers, crossing fairways in zig-zags, searching for lost balls on every shot, constantly hoping against hope for anything straight and airborne, all while remaining outwardly positive, takes a psychological toll. When I checked my watch at the turn, three hours and seven minutes had expired since our tee time. On pace for a six hour and fourteen minute round―unheard of. The three other caddies and I commiserated silently, glancing at our golfers as if our captors.

But when we reached the 16th tee these bad feelings faded. A genuine smile came across my face. In two years living in St. Andrews, I estimate I went around the Old Course about 120 times, equal parts playing and caddying. And every single time I got to the 16th tee, without fail, the mood of the round changed. Whether I was scoring awful or looping for somebody miserable, or rain had soaked my grips to the steel, or the wind was bitter cold and I'd neglected to bring even a cracker for my body to burn like kindling, always when I got to the 16th my mind brightened. To me it's the stretch when the Old Course really becomes the Old Course. The town comes back into focus―the Rusacks Hotel, red Hamilton Hall, the fortress of the Royal & Ancient clubhouse. The 16th tee is the point where the quality and history of each shot left to be played is overwhelming.

Now people are always attempting to wax poetically about the Old Course and it gets tiresome, but hear me out.

Even if the remaining shots on these last three holes are all botched, there's still a special feeling over each one. The maddeningly placed Principal's Nose bunker makes how to play the 16th tee shot a painfully arrived at decision for a player of any caliber, no matter the wind direction. And the approach there is delicate wherever the flag is or how short an iron you have in your hands. Then there's the blind Road Hole tee shot, a blast over the railroad shed that skirts alongside the Old Course Hotel windows. A thrill whenever the ball hits, or doesn't hit, building. Then comes the long approach into the front bank of the green with the famous stonewall lurking behind. As you come to the green you'll more than likely pass someone heading to the range on the shell walkway or be waved hello by patrons standing outside the Jigger Inn.

Then at the 18th there's the final drive, the let-it-all-hang-loose ripper down the 110-yard-wide fairway, that with a draw may get the green, or with a slice, ricochet off a car parked in front of the New Club. If your heart doesn't skip as you then walk over the legend-worn stones of the ancient Swilcan Bridge, you're not a golfer, perhaps not even human. And to end it, the final putt dropping, even if it's just a tap-in, on the tilted surface sculpted by Old Tom Morris himself. If four feet or more, the usual gallery of milling townsfolk is reliable to applaud.

And as my Lexus employee played these last three that post-Open Monday, I could tell from his body language he recognized them as the most special part of the course, too. I snapped his camera as he and his colleagues stood on the bridge. I think he tripled 16 and quadrupled 17, but as I remember, squeaked a par on 18, miraculously (accidentally) judging a putt from the Valley of Sin to within two feet. We high-fived.

As we walked off the 18th green, Rick Mackenzie the caddymaster, was standing waiting for me. Our eyes locked as he waved his index finger toward the 1st tee. My stomach growled; I had been thinking about a Tesco's chicken and bacon sandwich since the 4th hole. But I knew that if I didn't head directly to the first tee, I'd be "up the road"―Mackenzie's brogue colloquialism for "fired."

There were four people standing on the 1st tee, stretching and loosening up their swings like hula-hoop dancers. It was OK, I told myself. I'd be on the 16th tee again in five hours.