I was all sorts of sickly during last month’s Open at Royal Troon, but on the Wednesday eve of the championship, I felt a burst of energy when we pulled into the parking lot at Prestwick Golf Club. All of 500 yards and a caravan park separate this year’s Open host and Prestwick, the original Open host.
When you visit one course, don’t miss the other. That’s the point. So despite low sleep, low fluids, low everything, we set out to game it around Prestwick, and were delighted by the entirety of it. But there’s one hole that stood out above the rest — and even today, seven weeks after my maiden voyage across the Atlantic, it’s the golf experience I can’t stop thinking about.
My coworker, James Colgan, and I cruised along for 14 windy holes, earning our pars and forgetting about our doubles, when a member and his son played up behind us. Normally, at this point in a round, I’d shy away from company. We were four holes from the clubhouse. They were only going to slow down our journey to dinner. But you’re only allowed to be dismissive of new playing partners when at home. When you’re at someone else’s house, you say yes to vegetables … and ask for seconds. It helps that playing alongside a member at a classic course like Prestwick is often like adding a free caddie. Ours doubled as a quasi-historian.
They joined us on the 15th tee, which sets you right next to the clubhouse. You can hear the sea, sure. And you can see the 1st hole and the 18th, and the commuter trains ripping by. You can imagine the 1868 Open coming down this stretch of turf, Old Tom Morris rooting on Young Tom. But beyond all that, there isn’t much to glean from the 15th tee. All you know is that it is 353 yards long and earns its name quite literally: The Narrows.
At first blush, the 15th at Prestwick feels like a lot of Scottish golf. It’s just slightly uphill and flanked by fescue-covered dunes. There’s a bunker up the left that serves as your mental bumper. Don’t go there. Only it’s just off your intended line, according to the yardage book. If you can carry it 180 yards up the hill, our playing-member told us, that bunker is out of sight, out of mind. But importantly, besides that trap there isn’t much for visual boundaries, which is discomforting. There are a number of blind-ish tee shots at Prestwick. There are a number of blind tee shots all over Scotland. You can’t have all the undulations of links turf and seaside dunes without losing track of the fairway once in a while. (Brooks Koepka probably wouldn’t like Prestwick. He’s not a big fan of the blind shot.)
Playing into the prevailing wind, we were guided to hit a 215-yard shot, right up the gut. There is room for a draw and there is room for a cut, but there is no room for a hook nor a slice. Standing on the 15th tee feels a bit like sitting atop a tight black diamond skiing slope. You’ve got to move forward safely, but the obvious path feels too difficult to make happen. But what you don’t realize until you crest the hill is that a set of surprising moguls await.
Beyond the left fairway bunker is a hollow that collects plenty of balls that hit the fairway. It’s a comforting spot, shielded from the wind by the dunes, but makes the approach mostly blind. Up to the right is a platform of shortgrass about 30 yards long and 20 yards wide. This is where you’re trying to go. A sort of green-before-the-green. So we’ll ask — how many greens do you hit from 210 yards? Not many, even for scratch golfers.
But part of what makes this hole brilliant is just that — it is essentially consecutive par-3s. A long one (210 yards) followed by a short one (125). And there’s a bunker long of the first “green” that makes for an impossible par, and bunkers short of the actual green that makes life difficult from the the right rough. For the player who can’t keep driver on the planet, it’s great! You wouldn’t want driver. Or 3-wood. Or 5-wood. 4-iron or some sort of hybrid is the proper play, which can always lull us into a sense of comfort. Stubborn players who elect for something longer will find a ravine of fairway that snakes to the green, but at just 15 yards wide, it’s barely worth thinking about.
From the green-before-the green, you can see the actual green, which banks hard from left to right. So much that most of its left side is completely useless for hole locations but vital for getting your ball closer to the hole. It plays a bit like a redan, where you’re aiming away from the hole to get close to it. Going right at it will only lead to your ball bounding through, a fact that this 7-handicap realized too late.
Chipping back on for a two-putt bogey, I had no one else to blame. Our playing-member told me to trust his line. After I ignored it, his son stepped up and hit the shot I didn’t, a swift reminder that I was nothing but a Prestwick newbie and that the 15th is the ultimate hindsight hole. Where the view from wherever your ball finishes is the enlightened view. On The Narrows — like a lot of links golf — you’re thinking about how far you hit it, how short you may hit it, how left and how right you’ll hit it, with trajectory and wind as the final ingredients — the combination of which reveals itself only once you’ve played it.
I spent much of the next two months traipsing Europe before recently returning to the American Midwest, wishing I could play the Narrows once more. And to do it tomorrow. Were this hole in northern Missouri, its green would be too soft, pummeled by the summer thunderstorms. Were it in Scottsdale, it would feel even more claustrophobic, with cacti and all manner of parched vegetation in the surrounds. Were it in Florida, it would be a revelation. But your ball wouldn’t skip along the turf quite like it does on the west coast of Scotland.
Therein may be my favorite part of The Narrows. It can’t exist everywhere. Only here, a wonderfully long way from home.
Ever played the 15th at Prestwick? Feel free to share your thoughts on that hole or your favorite with the author at sean.zak@golf.com.
