Scotland's golf links have transformed me

In recent years, the Open Championship has become my personal favorite major championship in golf. Ever since I started playing nearly 35 years ago, I always had a fascination with that different form of the game known as links golf - usually on half-brown turf, players using bump and run shots, stacked sod bunkers that are a real hazard and wind speeds that can mean nothing at all or up to a 4 club difference. And all of the history involved in the oldest championship in the world produced an increasingly seductive allure for me as I’ve aged. But it was not until I finally crossed the Atlantic for an 11-day immersion into links golf that I became totally, impossibly in love with this event. Only now can I fully appreciate exactly what the players are facing.

Having said that, I am positively giddy that we will get a triple dose of links golf in July as this year’s Open at Carnoustie next week will be followed immediately by the Senior Open at Muirfield, then the Women’s Open at St. Andrews. I had the pleasure of a round on the Old Course but only got to look over the Muirfield links from the top of Gullane Hill when I played the spectacular Gullane No. 1 Course next door. Sadly, Carnoustie did not fit in our itinerary. I have been assured it’s a masochist’s delight, perhaps the toughest course in the world.

My buddies and I are now planning another Scotland golf vacation for 2008, this time to the Highlands and Northeast to play Royal Dornoch, Nairn, Cruden Bay and many other seaside gems. I cannot urge you strongly enough, that if you have never played real links golf, to make it the highest priority on your life’s to-do list. Anywhere in the British Isles will do. I swear it’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing golf in my life.