As I mentioned before, on my first trip to Scotland, Dr. Bruce and I did not have tee times for Muirfield or St. Andrews golf courses. Therefore, I would have to enter our names in the daily lottery in order to play the Old Course at St. Andrews.
St. Andrews is now set up such that you can play the Old Course by booking through one of the golf brokerage firms, that has an arrangement with the St. Andrews Links Trust or you can take your chances with the daily lottery, which allows a limited number of tee times for the next day’s play. The golf brokerage firms charge an arm and a leg for them to get you a tee time, plus you have to stay at one of their hotels for a minimum of at least two or three days. It’s a very expensive way to go, just to play St. Andrews. The alternative option is the daily lottery, where you take your chances on your name being drawn and the tee time that you will get for the next day’s play. Since, we were on a very tight budget; we opted for the daily lottery. We had a two day window in which we could play St. Andrews, either on a Thursday or a Friday, so we both said a little pray to the golf gods.
I called the St. Andrews lottery phone number around 8 AM on Wednesday morning, putting our names in. We were still in the town of Gullane and had a mid morning time tee at the Gullane #1 course. The St. Andrews lottery phone operator told me to either call back at 4 PM that afternoon, or we could go to the starter’s area bulletin board at the Old Course in St. Andrews to see the names and tee times that were drawn for Thursday’s play, where there would be an official computer printout sheet displayed prominently for all to see.
Bruce and I were not scheduled to be in St. Andrews until 6 PM that Wednesday evening, so I elected to call them back at 4 PM. We found a phone booth in the town of Gullane. I put in the necessary shillings and dialed the phone number. My hands were shaking, my mouth was dry, and the sweat was starting to bead up on my forehead, you would have thought that I just ate a very spicy burrito as big as your head with strong jalapeño peppers. The good Lord was smiling upon us, for we had gotten a 10:30 AM tee time on the Old Course for Thursday’s play. We hit the mega Lotto.
Upon arriving in the town of St. Andrews later that evening, we immediately checked into the Scores Hotel, which is about one half block from the Old Course. After we checked in and put our golf clubs and bags in our separate rooms, we agreed to meet in the hotel’s main lobby. From there we literally ran down to the Old Course to double check the outside bulletin board, sure enough there was our name — the Paris group teeing off at 10:30 AM. Bruce and I turned after several minutes of just starring at the printout sheet and headed to the Old Castle tavern on south Castle St. to celebrate our good fortune with some local pints of brew, as Baha’ u’ llah once said, “A thankful person is thankful under all circumstances. A complaining soul complains even if he lives in paradise.” We were in Mecca and getting a little drunk with beer and happiness, that being as close to paradise as we where going to get.
We showed up the next day a little hung over for our tee time, around 9 AM, being 1 ½ hours early and ready to play. Bruce and I did some practice putting on the putting green just to the right of the starter’s shack, we were extremely pumped up. Both of us finally noticed all these fellows hanging around the putting green and starter’s shack, where lady luck had not smiled upon them from the previous day’s lottery. They were all queueing it up in hopes that a twosome or threesome would let them join them on this most hallowed ground.
Dr. Bruce started up a conversation with this fellow American named Peter Baker from Akron Ohio, who was on his honeymoon, only having this one single day in St. Andrews before his wife and he were off to London to continue their honeymoon. Peter was a very likable Vietnam veteran, who happened to be a former U.S. Marine officer. He was assigned to a patrol gunboat in Vietnam that was very similar to the gunboat used in the movie “Apocalypse Now”, starring Martin Sheen, heading up the Nung River in Cambodia, as the Stones played “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in the background.
Peter was playing to a nine handicap, who wanted desperately to play the Old Course; he was number 35 on the waiting list of all the single guys trying to catch a game that day. He had arrived at 7:30 AM, just to be number 35. The numbers 1 through 34, all appeared to be Asian born players who kept bowing graciously, while smiling continually towards Dr. Derm and myself. They all appeared to be wearing black or dark shorts, with black over the calf socks, wearing brightly colored short sleeve Tommy Bahama shirts, with some of them having a Nikon either draped over their shoulders or hung around their neck in their sandaled styled golf shoes.
Bruce and I really liked this Marine vet from Akron, Ohio, how can you not want to support one of our military, so I walked over to the starter’s shack and asked the starter if there was any way that we could have Peter play with us. To my complete surprise, the starter said, that since the tee time was booked officially in my name, I could therefore, have one or two or none of the waiting players play with us, it was totally at my discretion.
Needless to say, I said that we wanted the fellow American by the name of Peter Baker to join us. When the St. Andrew’s starter publicly announced Peter’s name, as the only golfer who would be playing with us at our 10:30 AM tee time, you could have heard a chop stick drop. Man, all those Asians were really pissed at us, because Peter just went to the head of the class. I’m pretty sure that they were all swearing at us in their native language, because the bowing and smiling immediately stopped when they heard that Peter was the only one that was going to play with us. I believe they were also putting on some oriental curses on all three of us. One of the Asian’s seemed to do some sort of acupuncture on a golf doll that he had, which somewhat resembled Dr. Bruce, as he felt some minor pains in his back shortly after the announcement.
After that great and memorable round at St. Andrews where we all shot in the 80’s, the three of us then headed to the Whey Pat Tavern on Bridge St. to again abide in some local pints of brew and get inebriated. There Peter called his wife to join us for some drinks before they headed off by train to London. She was an attractive wife who was very appreciative to Bruce and I for letting Peter join us, showing her gratitude by buying several rounds of beer. We were all getting shitfaced. It was a great day for all of us, although, every time we saw an Asian later that day they were still swearing and pointing at us. As president Kaunda of Zimbia said, “When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees” and we were going to be stung all day long. Hell, at that point we were feeling no pain anyway.
Geez, that’s unbeelivblae. Kudos and such.