Tom Coyne - A Course Called Scotland: Searching the Home of Golf for the Secret to Its Game

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To my girls,

of course

Alas! why plainen men so in commne

Of purveyance of God or of Fortune,

That giveth them full oft in many a guise

Well better than they can themselves devise?

Geoffrey Chaucer,

The Knightes Tale,

The Canterbury Tales

Life is short. Golf very, very often. And dance naked!

Gramma Billy

ROUND

1. Littlestone Golf Club

2. Royal Cinque Ports

3. Princes Golf Club

4. Royal St. Georges Golf Club

5. Mullion Golf Club

6. Perranporth Golf Club

7. Trevose Golf & Country Club

8. Royal North Devon Golf Club

9. St. Enodoc Golf Club

10. Holyhead Golf Club

11. Bull Bay Golf Club

12. Conwy (Caernarvonshire) Golf Club

13. Wallasey Golf Club

14. Royal Liverpool Golf Club Hoylake

15. Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club

16. Royal Birkdale Golf Club

17. Blackpool North Shore Golf Club

18. Eyemouth Golf Club

19. Dunbar Golf Club

20. Glen Golf Club

21. North Berwick Golf Club

22. Archerfield Dirleton Links

23. Muirfield

24. Gullane Golf Club, No. 2

25. Renaissance Club

26. Kilspindie Golf Club

27. Kingarrock Hickory Golf

28. Craigielaw Golf Club

29. St. Andrews Links, Eden Course

30. St. Andrews Links, Strathtyrum Course

31. Burntisland Golf House Club

32. Kinghorn Golf Club

33. Lundin Golf Club

34. Leven Links Golf Course

35. The Golf House Club, Elie

36. St. Andrews Links, Jubilee Course

37. Anstruther Golf Club (9 holes)

38. Crail Golfing Society, Balcomie Links

39. Crail Golfing Society, Craighead Links

40. St. Andrews Links, New Course

41. Kingsbarns Golf Links

42. St. Andrews Links, Castle Course

43. Scotscraig Golf Club

44. St. Andrews Links, Old Course

45. St. Andrews Links, Old Course

46. Monifieth Golf Club

47. Carnoustie Golf Club

48. Montrose Golf Links

49. Stonehaven Golf Club

50. Royal Aberdeen Golf Club

51. Murcar Links Golf Club

52. Newburgh on Ythan Golf Club

53. Trump International Golf Links

54. Cruden Bay Golf Club

55. Peterhead Golf Club, Craigewan Links

56. Inverallochy Golf Club

57. Fraserburgh Golf Club

58. Rosehearty Golf Club (9 holes)

59. Royal Tarlair Golf Club

60. Cullen Golf Club

61. Strathlene Buckie Golf Club

62. Buckpool Golf Club

63. Spey Bay Golf Club

64. Moray Golf Club

65. Hopeman Golf Club

66. Covesea Links (9 holes)

67. Nairn Dunbar Golf Club

68. Nairn Golf Club

69. Asta Golf Club

70. Shetland Golf Club

71. Whalsay Golf Club

72. Stromness Golf Club

73. Castle Stuart Golf Links

74. Fortrose & Rosemarkie Golf Club

75. Tarbat Golf Club

76. Tain Golf Club

77. The Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle

78. Golspie Golf Club

79. Royal Dornoch Golf Club, Championship

80. Royal Dornoch Golf Club, Struie

81. Brora Golf Club

82. Wick Golf Club

83. Reay Golf Club

84. Durness Golf Club

85. Ullapool Golf Club (9 holes, 18 tees)

86. Gairloch Golf Club (9 holes, 18 tees)

87. Skeabost Golf Club

88. Isle of Skye Golf Club

89. Traigh Golf Course

90. Tobermory Golf Club

91. Carradale Golf Club

92. Machrihanish Dunes

93. Machrlhanish Dunes

94. Machrihanish Golf Club

95. Machrihanish Golf Club

96. Dunaverty Golf Club

97. Shiskine Golf and Tennis Club (12 holes)

98. Trump Turnberry Resort, Alisa Course

99. Prestwick St Nicholas Golf Club

100. Prestwick Golf Club

101. Royal Troon

102. Barassie Links

103. Western Gailes Golf Club

104. Dundonald Links

105. Isle of Barra Golf Course

106. Askernish Golf Club

107. Askernish Golf Club

108. Askernish Golf Club

109. Askernish Golf Club

110. Bruntsfield Links (Open Qualifier)

111. The Original Bruntsfield Links

His bones arrived by shipwreck. In life he was a fisherman, but he did not die at sea. He persuaded his executioners to tie him to an of wooden beams and expired after two days lashed to his crooked cross. He considered himself unworthy of being crucified by the same design as his savior.

Accounts describe his gratitude for martyrdom. As death approached, he proclaimed, Receive me hanging from the wood of this sweet cross.... Do not permit them to loosen me. And history records the travels of a Greek monk, St. Rule, to whom God gave instructions to move the martyrs bones for safekeeping. Rule was to sail with the relics to the edge of the known world and build a church where the faithful would flock, finding health and hope.

Storms pushed the monk aground near a tiny fishing village that would be transformed just as Rules visions foretold. A cathedral would be built, and a castle and a university, and it would become a place of learning and pilgrimage. A visionary cleric and a divine storm would turn a rocky bit of coastline at the fringe of civilization into a place that, eight centuries later, is still visited by six hundred thousand hopefuls every year. Im one of them, though my route here was different than most. I designed my own shipwreck of a journey and prayed that my bones would land somewhere near the onetime resting place of St. Andrew.

Whether golf owes its origins to bored shepherds searching out diversions in the dunes or to itinerant wool traders who brought a Flemish game to Scotland, the home of golf would probably be a modest village today if a holy mission hadnt sent an apostles remains ashore there. Maybe thats why the worlds perfect town feels so divinely inspired, as if God wants you to be there. When you stroll the medieval streets of St. Andrews, with its mix of ancient history and college youth, its gentle bustle of golf and restaurants and golf and pubs and golf and museums, you walk with a sense of destination that St. Rule must also have felt. And since he could have simply sent the bones to Constantinople as the great emperor Constantine decreed instead of washing up on a stretch of sublimely golf-suited land, the saints mission stands as proof that God is goodand that Hes a golfer, too.

I want to believe all of that, just as I want to believe that one morning in the ninth century a Scottish king looked up and saw St. Andrews diagonal cross in the sky abovewhite clouds against a blue skyand took it as a sign to march outnumbered against the Angles. His vision and victory gave birth to the Scottish flagwhite against a blue backdropand is too good a story to not be true. And I want to believe that the patron saint of golfers did actually utter St. Andrews town motto as his final words, the Latin phrase now stitched into my putter cover and the only tattoo I might ever get: Dum Spiro Spero . While I breathe, I hope.