The Old Course

I arrived in Scotland on Wednesday, April 16th and got to the house without any problems. Chris Mike, my former Nike Golf client, arrived a couple of hours later. After lunch we headed out to the range where we hit a few balls to warm up. The range has been built in the last few years; when I was younger you used the first hole to warm up. The range is actually very nice although it is a bit of a hike back to the first tee of the Old Course. Our start time was 4:00 p.m. and we were a little worried about getting done before dark, but the starter assured us it would be light until 8:30 p.m. at least. After a few pictures on the first tee, we both hit decent drives down the first fairway. Luckily we were not paired with another twosome.

The weather was pretty nice for this time of year, it was probably in the high 40's (it is hard to tell as all the readings are in Celsius) and windy. We both played well on the outward nine. Chris faltered a little on the back, but had an awesome drive on the 17th, taking an aggressive line over the sheds, that had him right in the middle of the fairway. However the pin placement was brutal, hidden right behind the road hole bunker. Chris put his third up against the wall and came away with a double after a great drive. Neither one of us got close to crossing the road on our drives into 18, as the wind had picked up as the round went on. However, Chris did close out with a nice par. All in all, it was a good start to the trip, especially having spent the night before on an airplane. We made an early night of it as we had Carnoiste the next day.