A Little Slice of Fife – Part 3

St. Andrews!

By Marshall Carder

And so we set off for St. Andrews. The train up from Liverpool was particularly eventful and certainly would have made for some lively and interesting conversations among the local English folks, if they were naturally inclined.
    We were eight in all on the train (including – besides Jared, Wells, and me – my wife and our two kids, and Jared’s wife and their one kid), but only four of us had secured reserved seats. Because it was at the height of the spring-break holiday season, the trains were absolutely stuffed to the gills with university students travelling home from college. Worse still was that British trains are not designed to handle a great deal of baggage, and we were carrying the motherlode. With three sets of golf clubs to add to our eight bags, it was nearly impossible to find spaces for our stuff. With three train changes, we had a very stressful five-hour ride.
    But in some ways, it really felt like a mission from God, even if it was just a Golf God, so we soldiered on. We handled the bags the best we could, blocking corridors when left with no choice. We jockeyed for seats but in the end we mostly stood around and filled our heads with visions of the Old Course, gleaned from countless hours spent watching the great links on the tube.
    When we finally arrived at Luechers, a small town and parish near the northeast coast of Fife in Scotland, we could barely control our emotions. Sheer joy was plastered on all of our faces.
    A long line of ample-sized taxi vans were waiting, which quickly assuaged the fear that our luggage would once again be a problem. The plucky and vibrant cab driver was quick to welcome us to Scotland. She made it abundantly clear through her attitude and her conversation that we were no longer in England. Can’t you tell, she may have been asking, we are nice!

Only minutes later, we were passing the famous Old Course Hotel and meandering through the ancient town with the reality of it all screaming in our ears. The visions that had rattled around in our heads for so many years were now unfolding right before our eyes. We had finally arrived at our home for the week and were all overwhelmed with joy. Even the kids could not believe our good fortune. The ruins of an ancient castle dominated the view outside our window, and the sounds of the gulls and the ocean punctuated the scene with an exclamation point! We were only a 10-minute walk to the Old Course and we could barely contain ourselves.
    As we milled about with a nervous joy, we all agreed that we needed to get out there and play. We had arrived, the courses were calling, and even the sun had peaked out from its wintry den. Soon after we arrived, Bert, Brooks, his friend Jim Kydd, and Jim’s friend Ron McCamish came in from the course with their faces locked in a perma-grin.

In the middle, Bert & Brooksie,
flanked by Jim Kydd (L)
& Ron McCamish (R)

    They were beside themselves after having just walked off of Old Tom’s gem. [Thomas Mitchell Morris (16 June 1821 – 24 May 1908), otherwise known as Old Tom Morris, was a Scottish golfer. He was born and died in St Andrews, Fife.] Over the moon may be an appropriate expression for the way they felt. In fact, they were so overjoyed and overwhelmed with their day they insisted that JG, Wells, and I hit the links right then for a quick nine.
    Although everyone was hungry and everyone really wanted to eat my home cooking for a change, Brooksie volunteered to handle dinner, but insisted that we go play. That was all of the goading we needed. Grabbing our gear in a hurry, we headed out to play the New Course. The wind was blowing just a hint and the raindrops were falling with a light and gentle patter on our raincoats as we went off on the first tee. We were finally actually playing golf in the Kingdom of Fife!
    Jared had clearly come to play, and the birdies were falling. As the evening wore on, the sun came out and the rain stopped and we were blessed with a perfect day for golf. From my point of view, the beauty was captivating, and the course was amazing, but it looked as though I had brought my C game from home and this might be going to be a hard couple of days for me unless things turned around. And then, as if on cue, I hit a perfect drive, a very nice iron shot, and drained a curving left-to-right 12-footer for a birdie. It gave me hope that perhaps the Golf Gods would be there for me after all.
    In reality it wouldn’t really matter either way, but as an athlete, you want to perform, period. What was meant to be a quick nine before sunset turned into a magical 18 with JG shooting in the low 70’s and Wells in the mid 80’s. I limped in with an 89, but I had played much better on the backside and had started to hit it pretty solid, so there was hope. After the round on our walk home, we still could not believe our stupendous blessings. We had just finished the New Course – built in 1895, mind you – and tomorrow we were going to take on the grandest and most revered course in the world.
    Arriving at the house, we were literally overflowing with joy, stories, and amazing energy. The fact that dinner was almost all eaten and not perfect didn’t matter one bit. Our hearts and souls were filled, and much more content than any meal could ever make us. We ended up going down to a nearby pub to acquaint ourselves with the locals and wind down a bit. But the plan was to get to bed as early as possible. Tomorrow was the day we had been waiting for our entire golfing lives.

Sleep was not easy to find that night. With the overwhelming energy from the day’s round coursing through our veins and the anticipation of tomorrow fixed in our heads, it was very difficult to finally nod off. Eventually sleep did arrive, as it always does, but for me it was filled with nervous dreams. In the early hours of the morning, I began to have a terrible recurring nightmare. In my dream we are running late for our t-time at the Old Course. I find myself in the pro-shop inside the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in my underwear digging through my suitcase trying to get my pants on.

    I woke up several times with a start, only to realize that it was just a bad dream, and went back to sleep after checking the clock. But when I finally did sleep again, I was back in my skivvies in the clubhouse. White, grey, black, my underwear changed every time I went back to the dream, even though everything else stayed mostly the same.
    Lord only knows what Freud would have to say about this, but the idea of being almost naked and fully exposed to members of the R&A (the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews) seems pretty clear and straightforward to me. The sheer terror of being totally humiliated in front of all by the grand old lady of my dreams was weighing heavily on my mind. Only a solid day on the Old Course was going to shake me out of this funk. That is what the game can and will do to you if you love it that much.

Copyright © 2014, 2020 by Marshall Carder Marshall Carder lives in Cardiff by the Sea, California. He is a father, a husband, and writes occasionally about things that inspire him. This story appeared originally on WordPress, posted on July 24, 2014.