There are some areas in which Tiger Woods and I are equal. Admittedly, he’s longer off the tee. Does he have a few more quid in the bank? Yes. However, in my prime, I could get off my chanks on prescription meds with the best of them. My driving licence is no stranger to the odd speeding point either. But this week I did something that not even Tiger Woods has done, though it is on his bucket list: I played the Old Course at St Andrews backwards.
The Old Course in Reverse event is now into its third year. Like a kind of Hot Tub Time Machine of golf, it lets you play St Andrews as it was played up until the late 19th century, in a clockwise direction. You start on the first tee and hit to the 17th green, then from the 18th tee to the 16th green, the 17th tee to the 15th green and so on, before concluding on the 18th hole. This was how it went until 1870, when Old Tom Morris separated the first and 17th greens. For much of the following century, the course was played in both directions, but the anti-clockwise routing became the standard.
Not wanting to get too golf-technical on you, but the effect of playing the pre-1870 clockwise setup is a bit like doing a bunch of mushrooms or some LSD – something that might have improved my score. Or having a certain type of nightmare. You find yourself in a landscape familiar to any golf fan who has watched the Open at St Andrews but strangely, subtly altered. Yes, you recognise this view, but you’re moving in the opposite direction. It’s disorientating and exciting and weird and terrifying all at once. Sensations undoubtedly very similar to flying through the air in an overturning SUV.
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The other disorientating factor for the mid-handicap amateur playing this world-famous course is that of having a caddy. Mine, Nick, is brilliant. A golf sage straight out of central casting, he is invaluable at selecting clubs (he’s sussed out my feeble yardages within three holes) and giving you a read for your putts on the vast, multi-breaking greens. I also get to hear some excellent new caddy patter. Caddy humour tending towards that of Fleet Street or the Marine Corps, this is usually on the darker side...
“Aye John, you’ve got a Lance Armstrong here...”
“What’s that then?”
“One ball left.”
Nick even survives an entire 18 holes where he manages to witness my hell-swing (a graceless, octopus-falling-out-of-a-window type spasm so demonic that other golfers are fearful to witness it lest it proves infectious) without comment or censure. After a few holes I even stop trying to pick up the bag all the time.
A miracle occurs towards the end of the round too. It’s been overcast and breezy all day. Then suddenly, the golf gods say “that’s enough of that”, the sun appears, and we get to play the famous 18th hole in blazing sunshine. What’s more, I play it well. I stripe my drive up the middle, just short of the path that crosses the fairway. I hit an eight-iron that lands in the middle of the green and – hey, hey, hey, non-golfer! You just stop turning the page and listen to my shot-by-shot recreation of how I played the 18th at St Andrews. Where was I? Oh yeah, my eight-iron rolls off the front of the green, down into the valley of sin. But I stroke the recovery putt up to five feet away from the hole. Yes, I leave my par effort on the lip but, hey, like Tiger, I am only human.
We walk off the 18th green and I stuff a tip into Nick’s hand.
“It was a pleasure, John,” he lies wonderfully.
It really was for me, pal.
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Illustration by Oscar Ingham