So Carnoustie was amazing, the weather was amazing but the wind was blowing pretty hard so it certainly made for an interesting round. This is a link for some information on the course and its history http://www.carnoustiegolflinks.co.uk/media-webcam/full-history-of-carnoustieOn The wind was blowing pretty hard so it made for an interesting round, for example we played a reasonable par 3, about 210 yards if I remember correctly. All three of us pulled out driver, all hit well, and none of us made the green.
This is the British Open trophy I got to take a picture with.
Unfortunately not the only bunker I was in that day. Television does not do them justice sometimes. I hope you can see the look of despair on my face, I did get out of it in one shot--though still not sure how.
This is a bridge that was on the course, I hit from where I am took this photo and the green is right in front of the building on the left.
For golf fans this is pretty darn awesome! This is the view you get walking up 18, the building is the hotel for Carnoustie. I golfed a 97, Serg an 87, and Andre a 77 that day, just amazing! So we had dinner and a celebratory beer before heading back to St. Andrews.
So this is a picture next to the 18th green at St. Andrews http://www.standrews.org.uk/Timelines/St-Andrews-Links. I wanted to show how close the road was to the fairway and green. You can't see it in this shot but there is a road the runs perpendicular to the fairway right down the middle of 18/1 since they basically share a huge fairway.
This is right behind the starters box, kind of cool with the symbol there.
This is a different view of the 18th green/1st tee box with the R&A building on the right http://www.randa.org/en/RandA/The-RandA-Organisation.aspx. Gorgeous view of the course as it sits right on the beach.
We went to see the starter at 6 am that day as he told us to get there early to see if we could get our names on a list in case people had decided not to golf that day. We arrived at about 6:15 and were names 7, 8, and 9 on the list. The weather was supposed to be really crappy that day so quite a few people didn't show up and we were able to get on, teeing off a little after 7. The course is really tough, you have to hit a good tee shot just to make the fairway on most of the holes. Unfortunately found myself in a couple of bunkers that day as well, they are really un-real.
One of the breath taking views from I think it was 10.
This is pretty famous bunker, You almost have no choice but to deal with it. Thankfully it was not one I had to try to get out of, you can see the people in the back ground that are not too far away to give you perspective on how big it is.
So this crow found us on one of the holes and followed us for the next couple of holes as that caddy was feeding it. It just hopped along and would take food right out of his hand!
This is the hotel at St. Andrews and is shown on tv during tournaments quite a bit.
So this is a pretty famous bridge on 18, we stopped and probably shut the entire course down for going on 10 minutes while we took pictures. The caddies were even taking pictures for us, this is a bridge that gets photographed quite a lot. This is right in the middle of 18, luckily I drove past it. This was just after the rain quit too. It opened up on us about midway through 16 and we were drenched by the time we were putting. Fortunately as quickly as it started, it ended so by this picture things were getting dry again. I had 4 pars on the day and finished with a 98, some of those holes are absolutely brutal. The groups go out pretty close together so we got hit into 4 or 5 times. Poor Serge, the group behind us hit his ball on the green once and hit his bag once (the funny part was that it was Andre since he ended up playing with that group instead of ours). The other 2 guys that Serge and I played with were pretty cool. I think they were father and son-in-law, the father is a retired Navy guy and both seemed like high quality people that were fun to spend the round with. They both got quite a kick out of my woods as they are actually wood.
This is a picture of the St. Andrews Cathedral up close. I guess Young Tom Morris is buried here. Very different but very cool.
Since we got done with our round early we decided to head to a nearby distillery for Tullabardine. It was a great tour to see how it all worked and got to try a couple of the different Scottish whiskeys that they made, very good and I am not really that big a fan of Scotch. So one of the things that I learned there was that some distilleries sell by the barrel. At first I really didn't understand why but as our tour guide explained, some people look at it as an investment. As it was explained to us, they were bought for roughly $1000 how ever many years ago, he used 15 years for his example. He said that barrel would be worth at least $6000 now. You can stop by and get a bottle from it any time you want or just bottle up the whole barrel.
The next day we went to the 10th oldest course in the world, as we drove up it had huge puddles in the middle of the fairway as it had rained most of the night so I ended up not playing. Just hung out and checked out a couple of shops instead. Below is a picture of the Edinburgh castle, we didn't go inside for the tour as we didn't have much time but it was still really cool nonetheless.
There were several cathedrals in the nearby area, this is one I thought looked really cool.
Another cathedral, equally inspiring.
After having a final beer at a pub there we caught our flight and headed back to Germany. Unfortunately we didn't get back until well after midnight but it was certainly worth it. An incredible trip that I will certainly never forget. Sorry this post didn't have all of the history lessons that Tammy puts into it, I hope that you still enjoyed the post anyway.
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