Strolling the Old Course
Sundays in St. Andrews
–Strolling –
If you have heard anything about The Old Course you have probably heard that it is closed on Sundays. Closed for golf that is. It is open for anyone to simply roam. Even though I knew this, walking onto the sacred grounds felt very strange. Sometimes during a Major League Baseball game you might hear the PA announcer say something like “...attention fans, after the conclusion of the 9th inning, children under the age of 12 are invited with their parents to come onto the field to run the bases at (insert field name).” Those can be special an memorable experiences, but this does not feel the same. This feels more like if someone at Wimbledon said, “here are the keys to Centre Court, we will be back on Monday.” It was uncomfortable at first, no ropes, no marshals, no one telling you where to go and what not to touch. For the first several minutes I nervously policed my kids behavior; “Don’t run around...don’t roll down those hills...stay away from the greens.1” But, by the time that we had wandered all the way out to the farthest reaches of the course and began heading back towards the town, all of that was gone. They ran and rolled, raced and rambled, while my wife graciously asked me to remember and recount the holes as I had played them the day before. It will always be a sweet memory for me and I especially love that one of those foggy memories of my children’s childhood will be that they ran around on “The Old Course”*. Even though for my daughter (who was five at the time) it will mostly be remembered because of stories and pictures, isn’t that really how all of us remember things?
If you make it to St. Andrews do not get to play The Old Course, don’t sweat it too much. But if you are there and don’t take the opportunity to walk around the course, sit on the benches, roll down the hills on a Sunday, that’s your own fault. :-)
FUN SIDE NOTE: 2 months after our trip, my daughter overheard someone say, “Gulf Shores” (as in Alabama). Her eyes lit up. She misheard them as having said “Old Course” – “(gasp) Are we going back to the Old Course!?!” – that made my day.
By the way, if we were in fact supposed to stay off of the greens, please forgive us. But I think it was fine, right? At least while we were there, no ropes, nothing. We “left no trace”