(In an earlier story, the narrator Jim and his friend/teammate/competitor Jordan Haskell had just played 18 holes at the Old Course at St. Andrews. They had also played 171 holes at other courses the previous week.)

We were still high from our adventures at the Old Course, where virtually every great golfer in history had played at least once in his life. Players we barely knew would ask us how we did on the links, and we never knew quite how to answer. The course was playing relatively easy that day as there was none of the howling wind that Scottish golf was famous for. I was happy with my score, sorta, but also knew I could have done much better. (Plus, I got the crap kicked out of me by a girl.) We had one final adventure left: Carnoustie, site of this year’s British Open (or just "The Open" as it’s known over there), where Jean Van de Velde blew a 3 shot lead on the final hole to lose.

I had spent some time before the trip trying to get us tee times at whatever top courses would take us. Unlike in the States, most Scottish courses are public, or at the very least they will take guests on certain days. Just try calling up Augusta National and asking whether they might be able to fit you in next Tuesday. They’d probably trace the call, track you down, and never let you or any of your descendants ever set foot on their property. I believe that the difference is because golf occupies different niches in the two cultures. In the US, the country club (often with the word "exclusive" in front of it) is the stereotypical venue. Rich fat older white guys in bulging plaid pants, chewing on cigars while driving their carts, calling each other by their initials while discussing layoffs. Golf grew up here (and still is, largely, although this is changing rapidly) as an upper class leisure activity, while in Scotland it’s almost part of the heritage. Scots have golfed on the hallowed grounds of St. Andrews for at least 600 years. Mary, Queen of Scots, was a golfer. The army wanted to ban golf because men were blowing off their archery lessons. So let’s just say it’s been around a while, and everyone was doing it. Gradually at St. Andrews, a course arose, much like a disc golf course might arise at a college. There was an agreed upon starting place, players would pick out holes (that trashcan, the second bunker past that sheep), picked out another after finishing the first, and constructed a course that way. If they liked the design, they kept on playing that layout. If not, they tried another. Thus evolved the Old Course. Many courses sprang up that way, and the game spread to other areas. The game belonged to the common man, not the elite, and so most of the courses had to be accessible to everyone, and at a reasonable price (until fairly recently, when they realized they could gouge Americans with too much money who wanted to play "the best" courses, and prices went up a lot (although a St. Andrews resident can play all the courses as often as he can get a tee time for 100 pounds a year, not much more than the 75 pounds a non-resident pays to play the Old Course once)).

So that’s how we ended up on the 18th hole at Carnoustie in a lower key remake of the Open just a month before. I checked our ultimate schedule to figure out what days would be best for golfing. Sunday before noon and Monday and Tuesday after 2:30 were all free, so I called the pro shop to ask about those dates. They told me the only times left were Monday at either 11:50 or 12:00. I winced, knowing that we would have to miss a game because of it. I thought back to last year’s Worlds in Minnesota, where we were going to spend our "rest game" golfing, and instead noted the angry reactions from teammates. Then I winced a second time, thinking I couldn’t do it. So, I worried about it for a couple days, and decided that if our team couldn’t beat the 40th seed without us, we were in such deep trouble that it wouldn’t matter in the end anyway. So, I called up to confirm, and they told me I was too late. I winced a third time, hung up quickly, and started brooding. If they had never given me hope that first time I by saying they had an opening, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it again, but now, now, it was in my grasp and I had let it slip away. I wasn’t going to go down without giving it my best shot, I thought, so I scanned the schedule again and picked the next game that I thought we could most afford to miss. That game was at 10:30 on Wednesday, and they offered a tee time at 10:10. If I took that tee time, we would be back in plenty of time to face off against the #2 seed in our pool at 4:30, I reckoned, and heck, we’d probably be more rested and happier, so we were actually doing the team a favor. And at the Captains’ meeting, when Charlie asked us all whether we wanted to push back games an hour for the eclipse, I thought instead about how that would give us an extra hour to talk about our round, so I heartily endorsed the motion.

So, we were all set, I thought. But then I looked again at the schedule on Monday of the tournament, and immediately got sick to my stomach. I saw that we were actually scheduled to play at 8:30 and 2:30. Uh oh. Let’s see, 10:10, say 4 ½ hours to play (the championship courses sometimes put in foursomes to get more money, so it takes longer than the traditional 3 hours), 45 minute drive back, warm up, maybe we’d be back in time to watch our teammates congratulate the other team on their victory. What to do, what to do. To make it worse, our top defender (and the other captain) was going to miss the game to pick up his sister at the airport. I’m debating to myself, "Carnoustie, or teammates. Carnoustie, teammates. Heck, I’ve got plenty of teammates, but when am I going to get a chance to play this course again? Carnoustie, it is!"

As it turned out, I was wrong when I thought I had misread the schedule, and our big game was at 4:30 (actually 5:30 because of the eclipse delay), and so we actually came out looking good since we were going to be able to make the game anyway. So, come Wednesday morning, off we went. A few minutes short of the town, we saw a sign that said simply "GOLF COURSE" and followed the arrow. "Hmm, this ain’t much of a course to be so important," I thought as I approached the clubhouse, but then saw it was another course, of course, and that surely Carnoustie would have lots of hype. We got back on the main road, continued to town, saw all the leftover British Open banners hanging from the light poles, waited until we saw another simple 2 foot by 1 foot "GOLF COURSE" sign with arrow (actually, I drove right by it, but Jordan was alert and we circled around), and drove up to the course. After getting lost one last time in the clubhouse, we appeared at the starter’s hut, paid our 60 pounds, shelled out another 3 pounds apiece for the yardage books, and squealed in glee at our "free" souvenir scorecards and pencils (all these places had nice colorful glossy souvenir scorecards for keeping at home and plain cheap paper scorecards for keeping score). This left us 2 and a half minutes to introduce ourselves to the two gentlemen we were paired with, hit some putts, swing a club to warm-up, and survey the scorecard and yardage book for the first hole to see if we’d be better off going into the bunker on the left side of the fairway or the one on the right side.

Our playing partners were brothers from Minneapolis there to celebrate the younger’s 50th birthday. This was the first round in a whirlwind tour hitting some great courses. It took us well over a hole to work into the conversation the fact that we were national champions in Scotland to play in the world championship in a sport called "ultimate." "Ultimate frisbee?" asked the birthday boy. "My friend Seth does the newsletter for the Minneapolis frisbee scene. It’s a great game." "No, there aren’t any dogs, it’s a competitive team game combining elements of soccer, football, and basketball," I blurted out before I realized that he was one of the 2% of the US residents who actually knew about ultimate. "Oh, yes, ultimate frisbee. Right, it’s a great game."

It took another two shots for us to let them know we had just played the Old Course. Meanwhile, my game was beginning to unravel. Jordan and I had been staging our own prolonged tournament during this trip, and after 189 holes, I was up by the grand total of one stroke. He tied it on number one, and when I became excessively acquainted with the deadly sands of Carnoustie on the second hole, he grabbed four strokes at once. I stopped talking to our new friends. I was saved by the eclipse. By about the time we got to #6 (the "Long" hole), the eclipse was about to start. I hit my driver flush. The brothers took mulligans, then began their march through the rough towards the hole. We kept walking and walking until we finally got to my ball. My heart was already beginning to pound as I surveyed my yardage book to figure out where I was. I chose a six iron and let ‘er rip, and it headed straight for the pin. I knew I hit it well, but couldn’t see the green from where I was. Jordan was characteristically on the right side of the fairway, though, and watched the ball silently as it approached the hole. It didn’t drop, but he couldn’t tell how close it was. As I reached the crest of the little rise, I could see for myself that it was close. Too close, in fact, and as I walked nearer and nearer the green, I could not see any daylight separating the ball from the pin. I was hoping that perhaps it was leaning on the flagstick, and that when I straightened the pin, the ball would rightfully fall towards its proper place in the hole. It wasn’t until I was about 20 yards away that I could tell that I wasn’t going to get my double eagle, although I was still damn close. All the while, I was oblivious to the brothers searching for their lost balls in the rough, and I didn’t even notice the younger hitting a 150 yard shot to about two feet from the pin. I heard the elder shout "Great shot!" but assumed he was talking to me, and I bashfully proclaimed, "Oh, I just got lucky" before Jordan pointed out the ball that was just a foot away from mine. "Oh, right, GREAT SHOT GARY!" I tapped in for my eagle while Jordan struggled to a 7, and we were once again all square. Over the next 12 holes, we battled. If this had been the Open and we had been two of the top golfers in the world instead of just two of the top 20 million golfers, they would be talking about this one for years. Each time it appeared that one of us was going to gain a stroke, maybe two, the other would come up with a phenomenal shot to force the first to match it. On the 10th hole ("South America", named after a laddie who saved up his money to go to South America but got so drunk at his going away party that he passed out on the 10th hole and missed his boat), I pulled my drive into the trees, but got a rare good lie. I tried hitting a "safe" punch shot to the fairway, but in a foreshadowing of the 18th, the ball didn’t want to stop and rolled into the Jockie (not TM) Burn. Jordan, meanwhile, played his normal safe game and was faced with a 3 footer for bogey. I had to take a penalty and drop about 40 yards from the pin, but bumped and ran my approach to tap-in distance, and Jordan had to sweat out his suddenly difficult putt to tie. At the difficult par 3 16th, I flirted with the seemingly out-of-play Barrie Burn when I pulled my tee shot onto the 17th tee, while Jordan ended up greenside. Perhaps the pressure was getting to me, as I flubbed my pitch shot, and struggled to a five to lose a stroke. As we stepped up to the 17th tee ("Island" hole), we again surveyed the yardage book to plan our shots. We had the wind behind us, and I was hitting my driver very consistently this round, so I decided just to tee it up high, hit it hard, and let the wind take it across the Burn, which snakes its way back and forth along 17 and 18. Jordan had a mid-iron in his hand, but when he saw mine fly the Burn, he had to pull out his driver to stay alive. He knew he had to hit it solid AND keep it on the left third of the fairway to avoid the water, and sure enough, his ball landed across the burn in the 5 yard circle in which he was safe. But then he left his second shot well short of the green and in trouble. I confidently grabbed my 9 iron for an easy shot to the green. I didn’t hit it well, though, and a bunker I hadn’t even noticed swallowed my ball. Luckily, I had had lots of practice extracting myself from these deep pot bunkers (not at all like American bunkers, which typically have about a two foot lip. These ones are all about six feet high/deep, and with steep walls, so if you can’t hit it high very quickly, you have to play out sideways or even backwards. Sometimes, you can’t even do that and have to take a drop and a penalty.), and I popped it out onto the green. I’d forgotten somehow that the balls roll a lot on those damn hard greens, and I ended up just off the green in some thick stuff. Jordan had extracted himself from trouble but was left with a delicate chip that he then hit too hard. I thought he was going to be joining me 60 feet away from the pin, but he managed to strike our friend Gary’s ball dead on (perhaps he remembered our snooker game a few nights earlier) and it stopped, but was unable to make the putt even with the benefit of having the line shown to him, while I got up and down with my trusty 3 wood. So, as I said, we strolled to the 18th hole, our final hole of the vacation, and after 10 days and 206 holes of golf, I had the cursed three stroke lead. The 18th is a long par 4 that crosses over the infamous Barrie Burn twice, has out of bounds crowding the left side of the fairway, a slew of bunkers on the right side of the fairway, a few more bunkers near the green, and the dreaded rough all along. Although I thought that any of them could conceivably come into play, I had no idea that ALL of them could come into play.

Back when I made the reservation, before I knew that the hole would be pivotal, I had decided that I was going to try to play the hole the way Van de Velde tried to play the hole, which is to say, I was going to go for it. I also had been hitting the driver well, so I really had no tough decision on the tee. I swung too hard, and dribbled the ball into the rough right next to the ladies’ tee, 30 yards forward and three yards from the out of bounds. I ignored the advice of a golf pro who said that one of the three keys to scoring well is "Never follow a bad shot with a stupid shot" (which isn’t bad advice for ultimate or life, either). The mistake from which I could not recover was in deciding to play the ball where it was, instead of declaring in unplayable, taking a penalty, and hitting another one off the tee. I would still have been leading by one, but I guess I reckoned that I would still have to put the ball into play. IN contrast, I figured there was no way that it would take me more than two shots to get the ball into the middle of the fairway. So, I decided to play the ball from the thick stuff. BZZZZ! I still needed 100 yards or so to reach the fairway, but only got about 30, again leaving myself with the OB looming on my left side. Faced with an almost identical situation for my next shot, I hit an almost identical shot, with the rough stopping the ball about a foot short of the Burn. Enough of this, I said, I’m close enough now to the fairway that I’ll just hit a wedge, then I’ll beat Jordan on the rest of the hole for the win. I aimed back to the fairway, took my swing, and watched the ball go perfectly straight, about 18 inches, and into the Barrie Burn. I took a penalty drop, got a good lie, and hit a punch shot onto the fairway, through it, and into a bunker on the opposite side. All things considered, it was my best shot of the hole.

You might think that at this point, I would have taken my licks and played it safe. But I still felt I had a chance to at least tie, if only I could hit a heroic shot out of that deep bunker, a terrific 100 yard pitching wedge, and a key putt for a 9. That didn’t happen. I hit a shot into the lip of the bunker and watched the ball roll back. Twice. On the third try I at least got out, but not quite as heroically as I had hoped. In keeping with the spirit of the hole, I dumped my 10^th shot into a greenside bunker, from which I was able to extricate myself with a single stroke. And finally, as I explained to people who asked me how I could possibly get a 13, I missed my 10 foot putt for a 12.

First it was Tin Cup, then Van de Velde, then me. It appears that Tiger learned from my mistake, since in his million dollar triumph at the PGA this year, he played the final hole very conservatively. But heck, ANYBODY can hold onto a two stroke lead.

Jim Parinella

GHIN # 6117-925