Its hard to say whether today was a better golf day than yesterday. As I mentioned before, the weather this morning was beautiful…sunny skies and everything. It wasn’t even bad when we teed off…that changed fast.
Jim and I slept in until 8:45 this morning…we might still be asleep if I hadn’t set my cell phone alarm clock. We had the full scottish breakfast and then our driver, Brian, took us to the Muirfield logo shop, which is in the village of Gullane (pronounced Gullen) a few miles from the course. Apparently, they want everyone to be able to buy their logo gear, but they have plenty of other rules for preventing people from getting into their club. Gullane is the home of a few other courses, and I took pictures of the first and last holes…it looks interesting and I’ve heard it is pretty good.
After we got back from the pro shop, I typed my Day 2 email and screwed around for a bit and then Jim and I walked to the course at noon for our 12:52 pm tee time. I was amazed at the number of people and their dogs walking around the ON the course. I took some pictures of all the things going on at the course. For instance, Jim and I walked around the 16th green and took pictures.
Jim in the middle of the Biarritz Green at North Berwick
As we were doing that we saw a man with his greyhound dog playing fetch in the 17th fairway. There weren’t any golfers coming for a bit so he would throw the red ball 3/4 of the way down the fairway. One time that the dog got annoyed and just left the red ball out there for the man to go fetch himself. With the links golf roll, and throwing down wind, I bet the dog made him walk 150 yds down the fairway!
A great place to play fetch with your dogs
Our afternoon round started off with pretty decent weather. The first hole is pretty easy and I barely missed a birdie putt. Even Jim had 20 feet for birdie, but he 3-putted for bogey. Starting on 2, we were back to rediculous wind. Holes 2 through 8 were all dead into the wind and two of the par 4′s were over 415 or so. I played pretty well today except for 8 and 9…both par 5′s. I took a solid 9 on the 8th hole and a 7 on 9. Then we turned downwind for the rest of the round and the rain started. I got out my rain pants again…worn them in every round so far!!! I also had to get out my rain gloves, which I’m starting to like. The walk from 9 to 10, which isn’t far, was very depressing. We weren’t having much fun at all because it was so cold and windy. Jim’s comment was that “Scotland is lucky they are the home of golf or nobody would ever come here”. I disagree! Anyway, Jim and I were playing a match and were tied through 9 despite the fact that I shot 47 and he shot 58. We had a great match on the back. I shot 38 and he shot 43 and he beat my net score by 1 and won the match 2 up. I ended up with an 85, which is decent considering I had a 9 on the front…I really hit the ball pretty well on that back 9 with one exception. On the 14th hole one of the guys I was playing with hit me in the neck with his golf shot…hard. He was on the right side of the fairway (actually…rough) and hit a wedge right into my neck. Fortunately it didn’t hit my ear or any bones…it couldn’t have hit me any more perfectly. It scared the crap out of me, but didn’t hurt that badly after the shock wore off.
I double bogeyed that hole and played the rest of the back nine 1 over. I was +2 on the stone wall holes today…you may remember that I was +10 on the three stone wall holes two days ago.
There is a famous hole at North Berwick called the Redan hole. It is a par 3 with the green on top of a hill and the green slopes back to front pretty steeply. There are huge bunders in front of the green so you have to get it up to the green. It is one of the most duplicated holes in the world. I made a nice par out of the sand, but Jim hit his shot to 10 feet and rolled in a birdie putt.
After our round was over we had a couple pints on the 2nd floor of the clubhouse overlooking the course.
One of the guys in our group is a Chelsea soccer fan so we went to a bar with him to watch the Chelsea versus Barcelona game. I enjoyed watching soccer with such passionate fans…one guy there reminded me of myself watching Iowa football games. Even jim enjoyed soccer as the end was pretty exciting.
Tomorrow, it is off to St. Andrews. I’m very excited.
Cheers,
Rob
