The Old Course is Brooks Koepka’s favorite, too. And the favorite of many of the game’s best minds. It’s where the best players in the world play some of their most emotional rounds of golf. And is one of the rare places where a handshake after 18 doesn’t suffice. Only hugs will do.
When I told Tommy Fleetwood’s caddie, Ian Finnis, of my summer plans, he was ecstatic. “My favourite place in the world,” he said. He’s planning multiple visits in the weeks before the Open. Simply put, you can have your Pebble Beach and your Brookline this summer. There is no better place to be than right here, in Fife.
My shuttle driver, Colin, was the perfect audience for my rambling explanation, as he isn’t a golfer. Nor was my bartender on Day 1 in town. Nor is my AirBnb hostess! I made the same mistake with all three of them, and to many others recently, saying the Open at St. Andrews is like golf’s Super Bowl. But my coworker Dylan Dethier recently corrected me: it’s more like golf’s World Cup. An Open at St. Andrews happens once every five or six years. And in the case of this pandemic open, for the first time in seven years.
And through one day in town, the buzz is palpable. Bartenders are already discussing special arrangements for Open crowds, where patrons will literally sell their seat at the bar to those waiting outside. On Wednesday, while amateurs traipsed the ground, a tournament scoring team was already out rehearsing operations. And shortly after that, yes, I was crushing my first can of Irn-Bru, a Scottish delicacy that is the perfect mix of orange cream soda and Mountain Dew.
My job, all summer long, is to capture some of that magic — both the exciting aspects of the biggest tournament in the world, but also the more mundane brilliance of what makes St. Andrews the true Home of Golf … and an otherwise incredible place to visit. I’ll be doing it from a one bedroom rental on Allan Robertson Drive, named after the original Best Golfer on the Planet. Tom Morris gets all the acclaim, and he rightfully has a street named after him nearby, but it was only after Robertson’s death that the Open began in 1860, an attempt to replace him with a proper Champion Golfer of each year.
On this Summer in Scotland journey, we will no doubt get into some generic stuff like visiting Old Tom Morris’s grave — a classic American golfer pilgrimage — or spending a night among the heathens trying to win a tee time. We will provide updates in the lead-up to the Open, like how the cold, dry spring has the course playing as firm as can be right now. But hopefully, we find some undercovered topics along the way, like how the name “St. Andrews” has become currency in this part of the world, how the Open can dictate the economics of everything in this town, and also my 90-day hunt for a Large version of the sweatshirt Tiger Woods wore during the second round of the 1995 Open.
