A depressing new report on even the slightest change in sea levels suggests most of the world's links are imperiled, with some already on the cusp of major damage in a perfect storm scenario.
From an unbylined BBC report on The Climate Coalition issuing a warning to golf, football and cricket as the sports to be hardest hit, with links courses the most endangered.
The Open is the only one of golf's majors played in the UK and is hosted on links courses, including - as well at St Andrews and Royal Troon - Royal Birkdale, Hoylake, Royal Lytham & St Annes, Muirfield, Sandwich, Turnberry, Portrush and 2018 venue Carnoustie.
It adds that "more than 450 years of golfing history" at Montrose, one of the five oldest courses in the world, is at risk of being washed away by rising seas and coastal erosion linked to climate change.
Research published by Dundee University in 2016 showed the North Sea has crept 70 metres towards Montrose within the past 30 years.
Chris Curnin, director at Montrose Golf Links, said: "As the sea rises and the coast falls away, we're left with nowhere to go. Climate change is often seen as tomorrow's problem - but it's already eating away at our course.
"In a perfect storm we could lose 5-10 metres over just a couple of days and that could happen at pretty much any point."
There will be the usual hysteria after a record falls that something must be done and while I always find that shortsighted and slightly disrespectful to the players involved--but let the hysteria begin!
Ross Fisher had an amazing shot at 59 during the Alfred Dunhill final round over the Old Course, in spite of a glacial round pace caused in part by the pro-am format. But a last hole three-putt from the Valley of Sin left him with 61 and a new record. Victor Dubuisson was on a 59 watch a few groups ahead of Fisher, but settled for 63.
“But to go out and shoot a score like that, with no bogeys, I just saw the lines and was hitting good putts and they were going in and I didn’t want it to end.
“At the home of golf, I wanted to try and give that putt on the last a try for 59 and it just came up a bit shy and then unfortunately I didn’t hit a great (birdie) putt, so unfortunately had to settle for a 61 – but I would definitely have taken it.”
A post shared by European Tour (@europeantour) on Oct 8, 2017 at 10:40am PDT
Why should we be hysterical when the distance situation at classic courses has been an issue for nearly two decades ago, with huge leaps since the governing bodies drew a line in the sand (2003)?
Because course records get attention, especially when it's the Home of Golf and especially on a course not using some of the absurd Open Championship tees employed by the R&A to mask distance leaps.
While most of us know modern course conditioning combines with today's instruction technology and brain power, should lead to records falling. And that's just fine. But couple that with players rarely hitting a long iron due to courses being overwhelmed, and these accomplishments should be warning signs that the importance of certain skills has been diminished to the point that such a record may need an asterisk.
“Carnoustie course record holder – it sounds good doesn’t it? It was a good day’s work by any standards,” Fleetwood said. “When you consider all the great players who have played here, in Opens and in this tournament, it is very special to have the lowest score ever recorded on this course. Yeah, I hit it in some places where you probably won’t be able to get able to hitting it when the Open comes back here next year, but I’m still very proud.”
I'm not sure why I found this roofer quote so funny given that he's been tasked to eliminate the £1,500 each week spent by the Old Course Hotel to replace damaged slates, but I will certainly cite this as my reason for hitting the hotel roof twice in 2015.
Euroshield owner Henry Kamphuis said: “I was stunned when we got the call because it was St Andrews. I was up on the hotel and the gutters are just full of golf balls. It’s very easy to hit the hotel. It’s right in the middle of the fairway.”
We saw it at Troon and Turnberry and the world continued to revolve on its axis. So it is with great delight that Adam Lawrencereports on aNew Course at St. Andrews effort to remove the gorse that so annoyed Old Tom Morris, and restore it to the sandy/grassy aesthetic of old.
This news is fun on multiple levels: this makes for a better looking course, better playing and better functioning. And what happens in St. Andrews has the potential to influence countless other links that have been compromised by gorse and the loss of dunes.
Lawrence quotes Graeme Taylor, course manager for the New and Jubilee.
Taylor told GCA that the reason for converting the gorse areas back to exposed sand was primarily ecological. “Bob Taylor, our ecologist from the Sports Turf Research Institute, actaully first suggested the exposed sand areas back in 2005,” he explained. “Bob explained that exposed sand was a habitat common to linksland and was ecologically important. We tried a few areas then, but nothing like the scale of what we are now doing. Bob visited us again after last year’s Open, and again suggested that creating open sand areas would be very beneficial ecologically, restore natural habitats, and be an interesting feature to otherwise scruffy areas.”
The news of an architect's involvement at St. Andrews is also intriguing given Ebert's fine work at Turnberry, Troon and presumably based on the track record of he and partner Tom Mackenzie, Portrush.
Could this be leading to a consulting role for The Old Course? Given the many disappointing tweaks in recent times and the overabundance of gorse that would have Old Tom fuming, let's hope so.
I resisted picking up Tommy's Honor in my usual fear of fictionalized versions of real stories and a cover that suggested it was going to be a downer. But for me it has become the best pre-Scottish golf pilgrimmage reading and one which I now crack open before heading to Scotland. (Note to self: don't judge a book by its cover.)
Any concerns about the Tommy's Honor storytelling related to golf's founding father and his decorated son are promptly eliminated when Kevin Cook takes us back to Old Tom's days in Prestwick. He captures a genuine sense of what these brave, slightly-nutty characters did to transform the idea of whapping a ball around on fescue turf and into the sport we have today. The former Golf Magazine editor does it with a perfect mix of historical accuracy, soulful storytelling and cinematic flair.
Given the book's early focus on the first Open Championship at Prestwick and an Edinburgh Film Festival screening of the film version receiving encouraging reviews (here, here, here), the author kindly answered questions about his work.
No distributor has been finalized for the film with a screenplay by Cook and wife Pamela Marin. But since the film has just hit the festival circuit (clip's below Q&A), and we should be able to see it later this year or in early 2017.
GS: What compelled you to tackle the seemingly impossible task of re-creating the life and times of Old Tom, Young Tom and the founding of golf?
KC: My wife, Pamela Marin, took me to Scotland for my first pilgrimage in 1986. I showed up at the Old Course at dawn and was lucky enough to play with three locals, Peter, Peter and John. They blessed me gravely when I descended into the Hell Bunker and laughed when I hit a grounder and called it a worm-burner. To them that’s a “scalded cat.”
They also talked about Tommy Morris. I knew about Old Tom, but the more I learned about his son the more I was drawn to this untold family drama with a tragic love story at its heart—all revolving around the dawn of professional golf.
GS: How many years was the book in the works research-wise and what kind of interesting things happened along the way in digging through archives for this?
KC: First came 20 years of filing away bits and pieces of the story. Then I got fired as editor of Golf Magazine. Seemed like a good time to write that book! In 2005 I rented a room in St Andrews and spent a couple weeks haunting the university library. That was the first of several trips, with side trips to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, other archives in Scotland and the library at Royal Liverpool, where Tommy won the first big pro tournament outside Scotland in 1872. I hit a few worm-burners there before the 2006 Open Championship.
Along the way I made friends. One I’ll never forget was the late David Malcolm, a St Andrean who was one of the smartest and warmest people I ever met. (His Tom Morris of St Andrews: Colossus of Golf, co-written with Peter Crabtree, is a more scholarly approach to Tom’s life.) We compared notes and shared research. Our families became close, and we even house-swapped. David and his wife, Ruth, a gifted artist, got our pad in New York while Pamela and our kids and I stayed in their home in St Andrews.
GS: Old Tom’s Prestwick years have always seemed to be a bit of a mystery, yet you get right into them early on in Tommy’s Honor. What went into the Prestwick research and does Old Tom Morris get enough credit for his role in helping create The Open?
KC: Ian Bunch, then the club secretary at Prestwick, welcomed me to the upstairs archive where I pored through records of Tom’s 14 years there, including the invitations (on robin’s-egg blue paper) summoning crack golfers to the first Open Championship in 1860. Tom organized the whole thing, working with his patron James Ogilvie Fairlie and the wealthy, sporty Earl of Eglinton. Tom hit the first tee ball—just as the wind blew his necktie up over his face, blocking his view—and came in second to his rival Willie Park.
Kevin Cook and Pamela Marin, photo by Ken KubikGS: As a writer and historian, did you struggle at all with taking what you researched and how you made it into a narrative, even if you were perhaps fictionalizing at times? (As a reader you never come across as either uncertain in your take, nor overly presumptuous about the circumstances they faced).
KC: One surprise was how much specific information there was to tap into. During a time of what was called “Golfomania,” newspapers in Scotland and England tried to outdo each other in covering the game. I wore out a microfiche machine or two reading shot-by-shot accounts of famous matches. It was like discovering box scores from the very first baseball games.
Tom lived until 1908. As an eager publicist for his sport and his town (and his clubmaking business) he gave loads of interviews and loved to reminisce about Tommy. Many of their contemporaries wrote memoirs and gave interview of their own. David Malcolm’s research turned up fascinating details about Margaret, Tommy’s wife, which he generously shared with me. One of the great pleasures of writing the book was connecting the dots between countless details and putting them in context.
Yes, it had to hold together as a narrative. I was lucky to have a story that’s inherently dramatic, literally life and death. But there are times when you make storytelling choices, which boil down to educated guesses. For instance, I’ve got Tommy needling Tom about his lousy putting: “You’d be a fine putter, Da, if the hole were always a yard closer.” Now, I certainly don’t claim to know that Tommy said that on the hole where I’ve got him saying it, but he did tease his father, and Tom remembered that line decades later.
GS: How did getting the book to the big screen come about?
KC: A movie producer named Jim Kreutzer picked up my book on a golf trip to St Andrews and called to ask me about it. This was in 2012. Good timing. My wife, Pamela, a journalist and author of a well-received memoir, was remaking herself as a screenwriter. It’s an utterly different kind of writing—and thinking—and she’d written a script that got attention in Hollywood. That one didn’t get made, but it proved her ability. When the time came to make a deal for Tommy’s Honor, I optioned the book with one proviso: We write the script.
GS: The film looks visually stunning, but naturally, all golfers want to know is: did they make the golf scenes realistic?
KC: Jim Farmer, the R&A’s honorary professional and a former British Club Pro champ, did a terrific job as the actors’ golf coach. He got a surprise at first. During the casting process Jack Lowden, who plays Tommy, said, “Oh yes, I’ve been a golfer for years.” Because that’s what you do as an actor—if they ask if you can ride a horse or breakdance, you say yes. Later he told Jim he’d never swung a club in his life. But Jack’s an athlete as well as a brilliant young actor, and with Jim’s help he built a swing that’s authentic to the period. One thing I loved about Jim Farmer’s work was that the swings are authentic but different. Willie Park’s swing isn’t like Tommy’s.
There’s a crowd reaction that’s totally real. The great Peter Mullan, who plays Tom, had to make a ten-foot putt on a bumpy 19th-century green. He must have missed fifteen times. Each time, director Jason Connery reset the shot and the gallery got pumped up again. At last Peter knocks it in and the crowd goes genuinely wild.
The CGI people did a remarkable job recreating the blizzard of 1875 for one key sequence. And the biggest laugh in the movie comes during a favorite scene of mine, a caddies’ tournament that’s straight from the archives.
GS: How did the trimming process go for making the book into a film?
KC: As the screenwriters Pamela and I did our own whittling, sitting side by side at the computer in early 2013. If I showed you our first draft you’d see that its structure, tone and dialogue account for about 80 percent of what wound up onscreen. Jason Connery was a joy to work with and had a bunch of good ideas that we incorporated. Jason grew up playing golf with his famous father; he’s got this story in his bones.
GS: Is there anything since the book was published that you have learned that might have changed your approach to the “characters”?
KC: I think we got it right. Tom Morris was modern pro golf’s founding father. Tommy invented a new role—he was the first touring professional. Tour pros should tip their hats to Tommy every time they tee off on Sunday.
And I think or at least hope that my work, and the script of which Pamela was the lead writer, will remind readers and moviegoers that the game’s pioneers weren’t stained-glass icons out of ancient history. They were brave, tough, star-crossed strivers living in a fascinating time.
GS: What does it mean to you that your book is now often cited as required reading before golfers make the pilgrimage to Scotland for the first time?
KC: That’s the best compliment I ever got. Tommy’s Honor began with my first pilgrimage to St Andrews. If the book and movie contribute to others’ experiences, I’ll have done my bit to honor Scotland and its people.
The Independent's Geoffrey McNab reviews Tommy's Honour following the film's debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Based on Kevin Cook's terrifc book, it is directed by Jason Connery.
There are a lot of whiskers and sideburns and plenty of thick tweed on display in Jason Connery’s Tommy’s Honour, which opened the Edinburgh Film Festival on Wednesday night. This is a golfing movie but not one in the vein of Happy Gilmore or Tin Cup. It is a sturdy, handsomely made Scottish costume drama, set in St Andrews, Fife, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The film tells the story of Tom Morris Sr and Tom (“Tommy”) Morris Jr, a father and son who transformed golf and won multiple British Opens.
“Are you daft? You need a mashie,” one character is told in the middle of a game. That’s a reference to a club called the niblick, not to a way of cooking potatoes.
Connery evokes an era in which players strutted the Old Course at St Andrews in heavy jackets and caps, hats and bonnets, using wooden shafted clubs to hit hand-made golf balls off very rough looking fairways onto bumpy greens.
I'll be blunt: I'm was kind of over coffee table books. They're big, they're bulky and rarely do they really resonate. That was, until the two epics on St. Andrews published this year.
I can almost guarantee that barring some nice family member asking what you want and making the effort, one of these two books will not be under the tree on Christmas morning. But that's why we have the internet and this holiday gift suggestion list.
Roger McStravick's St. Andrews In the Footsteps Of Old Tom Morris is easily the richest visual history of early golf. The clarity of the early imagery and Roger's sense for what was important to include make this an amazing trip back in time when a small group of golfers had an inkling that they were onto something.
Josh Evenson's Links To St Andrews is one big love letter of sorts, with a wide range of contributors sharing stories of all kinds related to the town, the courses and the people who made it the Home of Golf. But beyond that, the book quietly tells the history of golf art right up to the present with works commissioned for the book. And thanks to incredible production values, joins the many historic pieces displayed as a work of art itself. This will look excellent in your vacation estates throughout the globe.
Brandon Tucker does a nice job of explaining the potential significance of Old Course tee times going to Links Trust control, eliminating a middleman of sorts and perhaps, perhaps making planning easier.
Sam Baker, founder and CEO of Haversham & Baker Golfing Expeditions, is optimistic the move by the Links Trust will be beneficial to leisure groups, not to mention the rest of the Scottish golf and travel industry. The current model, which can cause Old Course premiums to run as high as $2,000, has led to most OCE packages to be booked by corporate groups that stay 3-4 nights in St. Andrews exclusively. By spreading these tee times out to various packagers, leisure groups stand a better chance of securing better deals. Baker says his Scotland golf groups normally stay 6-8 nights and visit at least two regions of Scotland, whether it's nearby East Lothian or north around the Scottish Highlands.
"The bigger winner is Scotland," said Baker, of the Links Trust announcement. "The average length of stay associated with Old Course tee times will almost double, which is really good for Scottish tourism."
Andrew Argo of The Courier reports what appears to be excellent news for those hoping to get a tee time on the Old Course. The Links Trust is taking over control of the commercial trade times and will continue its other management duties.
Argo writes:
The arrangement does not impact on the general ballot to play the Old Course or local preferential times, which will continue to be a mainstay of the St Andrews Links operation.
Euan Loudon, St Andrews Links chief executive, said: “Following a lengthy period of consideration the Trust has decided that it is the appropriate time to take control over the presentation and sale of all Old Course commercial times as well as developing and managing a closer working relationship with multiple tour operators.
“This change in emphasis will bring to a close the existing contractual arrangement which we have enjoyed with our partner, OCE, for more than 20 years.”
It sounds like there is more news to come out of this, besides perhaps a streamlining of the process for tour operators and one that theoretically offers a better value.
Mr Loudon said the trust will undertake a significant programme of business development for the Old Course from 2018.
He added: “This work will focus only on commercial tee times and will not impact on the ballot, advanced reservations or local preferential times on any of our courses.”
**A tour operator reached about this wants to know the details but is optimistic this will benefit all who want to get on the Old Course:
"Details still pending so we will see. Certainly can’t hurt anytime you get a big commercial enterprise out of the equation. I think it will makes it more competitive for all tour operators. Consumer should benefit."
The European Tour'sAlfred Dunhill Links Championship kicks off Thursday morning on Golf Channel (8-noon ET) following a massive lead-in audience and energy injection from a one-hour Morning Drive where Old Tom Morris will be fondly remembered.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning Drive, is co-host of The Ringer's ShackHouse is the author of eleven books.
