Six rounds in northeastern Scotland reminded me why I would rather play interesting.
There is an irony to playing old and new Scottish links courses during the same week. The newer courses may be more visually spectacular. They can be manicured almost to perfection. But after six rounds in northeastern Scotland, I came home thinking about the rough edges.
Laurie, Lee Ann and I played Royal Dornoch, Brora, Castle Stuart - now Cabot Highlands - the new course at Trump International Golf Links, Royal Aberdeen and Cruden Bay. The trip gave us six very different versions of Scottish golf, from centuries-old links laid over rumpled ground to modern courses shaped with today's earth-moving equipment.
By the end of the week I had reached a conclusion: perfection and character are not necessarily the same thing.
First, I Had to Choose a Putter
Before leaving for Scotland, I had a problem to solve: I was struggling with my putting. Fortunately, I had approximately 60 potential solutions.
I narrowed the collection to four candidates and took the finalists to my office, where I carefully laid out the putting mat. Each putter received 20 attempts from five feet. Same distance. Same surface. Same golfer. May the best putter win.
The winner was my INOVAI 8.0, designed and engineered by Sam Bettinardi. I made 17 of 20 putts with it - 85 percent - and the INOVAI earned its ticket to Scotland.
There was only one flaw in my experiment: my office putting mat wasn't a Scottish links green. Once we arrived, it seemed as though every putt I hit stopped six inches short. Still, I made enough to win four of my six putting bets with Laurie, so the experiment wasn't a complete failure.
Royal Dornoch - The Greens Laughed at Us
Royal Dornoch didn't take long to remind us that playing golf for years doesn't necessarily mean you know how to play real links golf. The greens laughed at us all day.
Approaches that looked good in the air landed on firm, contoured surfaces and suddenly had ideas of their own. Balls bounced, released and wandered into places we hadn't anticipated. The wind howled into our faces for the first eight holes and then helped us for much of the next six. Oddly, the headwind was easier to judge. Downwind, judging carry and release onto those greens became another problem entirely.
The views from seemingly everywhere on the course were incredible. Royal Dornoch wasn't unfair; it simply spoke a golf language we were still learning.
Brora - Proper Scottish Golf
If we wanted proper Scottish golf, Brora delivered.
We met Mark, the caddie master outside the clubhouse. He recognized us from a Facebook post I had made about our trip. An incredibly nice man he explained that our first ten holes played into a wind blowing more than 25 mph. Well, beginning at the seventh and ending at the tenth, Scotland added a sheet of rain. Then the weather changed almost as quickly as it had arrived. The rain disappeared, the wind moved behind us, the breeze eventually faded and we finished beneath warm sunshine.
Meanwhile, sheep and cattle shared the course with us. It felt less like a resort and more like a golf course that had simply been living comfortably with the landscape for generations.
I even holed out from the fairway twice, which helped me nip Laurie in our putting competition. I am not entirely sure holing out from the fairway should count toward a putting contest, but I wasn't about to raise the issue.
Wind. Rain. Sunshine. Livestock. A couple of hole-outs. Now that was proper Scottish golf.
Castle Stuart - Beautiful, Polished and a bunch of birdies
Castle Stuart, now Cabot Highlands, gave us better weather, wonderful water views and a collection of challenging par threes. It was stunning and manicured to perfection.
I apparently chose wisely on the putter and won our competition that day, but my putting wasn't the golf story anyone remembered. Lee Ann shot one under par. Four birdies on the back nine. On a Scottish golf trip filled with wind, unfamiliar links shots and famous courses, breaking par at Castle Stuart was a spectacular performance.
Yet Castle Stuart also began to clarify something for me. I admired the beauty and the immaculate presentation, but I was starting to realize that I was more intrigued by the older courses - the ones with odd bounces, rough edges and features nobody would deliberately create today.
Trump International New Course - Beautiful and Brutal
Our day at Trump International was unusual before we even hit a shot. The DP World Tour was being played on the Old Course only a few hundred yards away, while we headed next door to play the brand-new course.
The New Course was visually stunning and offered wonderful shot values. To me, it seemed to twist through three different ecosystems: marsh, dunes and heathland. Then there were the greens. Calling them undulating doesn't quite cover it. Imagine buried elephants with long trunks and very thick tails moving in circles beneath the putting surfaces.
Our reactions captured the course perfectly. It was Laurie's favorite of the trip to that point. Lee Ann thought it was a fantastic test. I admired it, but found it extremely penal. Miss the correct part of a fairway or green by a couple of yards and double bogey could enter the conversation remarkably quickly.
Our caddies were outstanding and guided us around as well as anyone could. The course was spectacular, pristine and memorable. But for me, it was almost too perfect.
Somewhere along the way, we also discovered another of Laurie's previously unknown talents: she speaks swan. Two swans had their heads down, and I asked my caddie if he spoke swan and could get them to raise their heads for a photograph. He laughed and said, "Unfortunately, no." Laurie gave a quick whistle. Both swans immediately sat straight up and posed. #LaurieTheSwanTalker.
Royal Aberdeen - The Rough Edges Return
The next day brought almost perfect weather at Royal Aberdeen. No jacket needed. Before the round, we spent a couple of hours watching the DP World Tour at Trump International, then went from standing near the professionals to trying to negotiate a traditional links ourselves.
Royal Aberdeen had small landing areas, wispy rough and deep sod-faced bunkers. Even the bunker rakes were different enough to become part of the story.
One hole had a section of fairway that was literally about five yards wide. Five yards. A modern resort architect, armed with bulldozers and earth-moving equipment, would almost certainly never create something like it. But that was precisely why I remembered it.
The old links didn't always seem to put the fairway where modern convention says it should go. They made us deal with the land that was there. That imperfection was becoming the attraction.
Cruden Bay - A Fitting Finale
Cruden Bay sits beside the North Sea, a couple hundred miles south of Norway, and feels as if the golf course was draped across the dunes rather than engineered into them.
Local tradition connects the area with a battle in 1012 in which Scots fought Danish invaders, and some of the mounds around the course have long been associated with burial sites from the fighting. Whether every detail of the legend can be proven hardly matters when you are walking among ancient-looking dunes with the sea beside you.
The course was hilly, quirky and spectacularly scenic. Fairways climbed, fell and disappeared. Greens appeared in natural pockets. The land dictated the golf rather than the other way around.
Our final round also produced an appropriately personal finish. Laurie and I came to the 18th separated by a stroke. I had a four-footer that could change the outcome. After selecting my putter through a 20-putt laboratory experiment back home, and after spending the week leaving putts six inches short, I watched one final putt stop just inches from the cup.
Laurie beat me by one.
Science can only take you so far.
Perfect Isn't Always More Interesting
Castle Stuart and Trump International were stunning. Both were beautifully conditioned, visually dramatic and manicured to a level that would impress almost anyone. I would gladly play either one again.
But the courses I kept thinking about were Royal Dornoch, Brora, Royal Aberdeen and Cruden Bay.
They had rough and rumpled edges. The dunes looked windswept rather than landscaped. Fairways sometimes squeezed through improbable spaces. Livestock wandered nearby. Balls took bounces that no architect could completely predict. There were blind shots, odd angles and imperfections that would probably be engineered out of a modern resort course.
The difference, I think, is that the newer courses can shape the land to fit the golf. The old links had to figure out how to play golf across the land they were given.
That distinction stayed with me.
The new courses were spectacular. The old courses were interesting.
And after six rounds in Scotland, I realized I'd rather play interesting.
Royal Dornoch • Brora • Castle Stuart / Cabot Highlands • Trump International • Royal Aberdeen • Cruden Bay
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