Miracle at St. Andrews Page 10

“The perfect time to play…and that’s got to be close to a course record.”

  “It is the course record.”

  “Try not to lose the scorecard.”

  “I’m not calling to brag, although you should feel free to share the news with anyone you come into contact with. I’m calling because Sarah put me up to it. She thinks I’m in such rare form, I should try to play a tournament. I know you’re a busy man, you’ve got other things to do, but she insisted I ask if you could get me a sponsor’s exemption into the field at whatever Senior event they got going next week. Any chance of that?”

  The other end goes silent and when I look up I see that Sarah is doing a little dance on the sidewalk. Noah is laughing and Louie looks alarmed.

  “It’s kind of late for that,” says Finchem, finally. “I don’t have many dealings with the European Seniors. Offhand, I wouldn’t even know who to call. So I don’t want to get your—or Sarah’s—hopes up—but I’ll see what I can do and call you back tomorrow at four o’clock.”

  “Cell service is spotty here. I’ll give you my cell, but you should probably use this number,” I say, and give him the number of the pay phone.

  “Be by that phone tomorrow afternoon at four…and by the way, Travis, you’re a lucky man.”

  “I know. No one shoots sixty-one without a little luck.”

  “I’m not talking about your round, Travis.”

  42

  THE NEXT MORNING, SARAH, who is unaccustomed to three generous whiskeys at dinner, is not feeling too sprightly, and Noah and I brave the dining room of the Old Manse alone. A dozen diners are already there and as we enter the room and take a small table by the window, every one of them looks up and says, “Good morning.” For both of us, it’s our first stay at a B&B, and the unexpected intimacy with our fellow guests is a bit disconcerting, and we can’t quite figure out why the fact that our shared roof is on a large house rather than a hotel makes such a difference.

  “That’s one of the reasons why you travel, Noah. To experience different things.”

  “I guess.”

  Breakfast is also different. In the Scottish version, it’s a much more crowded plate—the fried eggs surrounded by baked beans, mushroom caps, cooked tomatoes. And there’s a medley of meats that include their version of bacon, sausage, and several blackened discs which we are told are blood sausages.

  “I think the breakfast is great,” I say. “I love the sausage and beans and eggs all together.”

  “Beans for breakfast?” says Noah. “Sorry.”

  When we get upstairs, Sarah has pulled the sheets over her head. We grab Louie and walk into town and I’m relieved to see that the pay phone is still there. At the local grocery, we buy a muffin and a large bottle of water for Sarah along with a London Times, which bears the front-page headline ST. ANDREWS BRACES FOR TIGERMANIA, lay it all quietly on her night table, and set out exploring in the van. We end up in the fishing village of Portmahomack, where we buy lunch from a food truck and walk out to a lighthouse, described as the third tallest in Scotland.

  We get back to Dornoch twenty minutes before Finchem is due to call, and take another walk through town, visiting its most significant nongolfing landmark, a thirteenth-century cathedral. When we loop back, the pay phone booth is occupied in every sense of the word by a teenage girl in a black leather motorcycle jacket. Her hair is bleached the same white as THE REZILLOS painted on the back of her jacket.

  “Who are the Rezillos?” asks Noah.

  “Never heard of them, but probably the name of her favorite band.”

  As it gets closer to four, the three of us edge nearer to the booth, but the conversation inside shows no sign of ebbing, and when I attempt a bit of universal mime—tapping my wrist with a finger and then holding my hand to my ear to convey I’m waiting on an important call, she responds with a universal gesture of her own.

  “Dad, that girl just flipped you the bird.”

  “She did, didn’t she?”

  A quick glance at my watch confirms that the minute hand is straight up.

  “Noah, we have no choice. We got to see her and raise her. With lots of attitude. And try to curl your lip as you do it. Ready?”

  “I was born ready.”

  “On three. One…two…” On three, we come up with double barrels blazing, our faces twisted into snarls. A passerby would be less than impressed to see a father and son flipping off a teenage girl in a phone booth, but fortunately the street is empty and our target is the only witness.

  Rather than being irked, the teen hoots audibly, replaces the phone, and steps out, our cause probably helped by the fact that we’re both wearing Spinal Tap T-shirts. “It’s all yours, gents.”

  Seconds later, the tower tolls and the phone rings.

  “Travis, this is Tim. I couldn’t get you into the Senior stop. Sorry, it was too late, but I twisted a couple of arms and called in a favor and got you into the Monday qualifier for the Scottish Open. The main event is at Loch Lomond, a new course that’s supposed to be spectacular, and the qualifier is up the road a bit at North Berwick, so if nothing else you’ll get a crack at another charming old Scottish links.”

  “Thanks, Tim, I’ll try to make you proud.”

  “I’ll settle for not being embarrassed.…Freedom and whiskey gang the gither! Take off your dram.”

  “Tim?”

  “A toast, courtesy of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. Good luck, Travis.”

  “What did he say?” asks Noah.

  “Freedom and whiskey gang the gither! Take off your dram!”

  43

  TIM WAS RIGHT. THE West Links of North Berwick Golf Club, which was founded in 1832 and whose members have included the prime minister of Great Britain and Burt Lancaster, is a wildly entertaining layout, which reminds you on every hole that golf is a game, not a religion. There are blind shots and ditches and barely a straightforward level lie and greens whose precarious slopes funnel balls down to the rocky beach. Its signature is the ancient stone walls that weave through the course like a happy drunk. On multiple holes, the stonework has to be avoided, navigated, or hurdled, and on 16 a wall creeps onto the actual putting surface, so that a golfer might find himself having to take an unplayable from a green.

  Then again, a course’s eccentricities are a lot more beguiling when you’re rolling in putts from hither and yon and bouncing a chip off the wall on 16 directly into the cup, miniature golf style, for your seventh birdie of the morning. “This is one charming golf course,” I whisper to myself as I shamelessly pluck the ball from the hole and toss it to the gallery, all of whom are related to me, either through marriage, birth, or dog food. It’s all the same to me, Royal Dornoch or North Berwick, as long as it’s Scottish, ancient, and a links, and my 63 (there was also an eagle on 10) wins the qualifier going away.

  That afternoon, we motor directly to Loch Lomond, a posh country club that attracts wealthy members from all over the world and whose parking lot is sprinkled with Bentleys and Aston Martins and Jaguars. Unbeknownst to me, the Scottish Open is always held the week before the Open Championship, and apparently many of the world’s best golfers use it as their final tune-up, and as I walk the range with Sarah and Noah and Louie, I’m agog at the quality of the field. Side by side are Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Phil Mickelson, Nick Faldo, and the twenty-year-old Spanish phenom Sergio García, who creates more lag on his irons than I’ve ever seen.

  The next morning, I enlist Loch Lomond’s fourteen-year-old club champion, Russell Knox, as my caddy, and he spends the next two days familiarizing me with the layout. Designed by Tom Weiskopf, the course flows gracefully through the riverside parkland and is breathtakingly beautiful. However, it’s neither old, nor a links, nor distinctly Scottish, and as a result doesn’t stir my kilt quite like Royal Dornoch or North Berwick, or tap into my newfound Scottish soul. And it doesn’t have the same effect on my putter.

  I’m still playing well, and having Sarah and Noah and Louie walking
beside me keeps me on an even keel, but if I’m not dropping two or three field-goal-length putts a round it’s hard to go crazy Dornochian low. Nevertheless, I shoot two subpar rounds and comfortably make the cut, no minor accomplishment at a regular European stop with such an elite field. I continue to play well on Saturday and early Sunday and I’m enjoying the prospect of a payday fat enough to cover the cost of the courtesy van, if not the whole trip. A strong front nine moves me into the top twenty. When I reach the 18th green, my novice caddy makes the mistake of informing me that if I could finish with a birdie, the field is so strong and filled with so many golfers who have already qualified, it might be enough to get me one of the last four invitations to the Open Championship.

  That was more than I needed to know at that moment, and with images of St. Andrews dancing in my brain, I yank the eighteen-foot putt three feet left.

  It turns out my caddy’s hunch was dead-on and my two-putt par leaves me in fourteenth place, one place short of St. Andrews.

  44

  IT’S DISAPPOINTING TO HAVE narrowly missed a chance to tee it up in a major, but the biggest check I’ve cashed in three years eases the sting. So does the satisfaction of a top fifteen in an elite European event. All I want to do right now is kick back and celebrate, dip into my winnings, and share it with my merry band of travelers. Even as we sit outside the scorers’ tent, my fourteenth-place money is burning a hole in my pocket.

  “How about we get off the road for a few days and live large?”

  “What do you have in mind?” asks Sarah.

  “A castle.”

  “That works.”

  Castle hotels are, in fact, a category of accommodation in Scotland, and the nearest one that offers the level of service I have in mind—“Don’t show me anything less than five stars,” I tell Sarah—is Inverlochy Castle near Torlundy and Fort William, about three hours away. A nasal voice at the end of the line informs me that Inverlochy is pleased to offer suites and deluxe suites and adjoining deluxe suites and for the even more discriminating guest, something called the Gate Lodge, which is a separate free-standing structure, a little castle of its own. The Gate Lodge comes with everything except a moat, and when she assures me it should be more than adequate for a couple, one child, and a small dog, I book it immediately, before some other fool with more money than sense grabs it out from under us.

  We check in that afternoon and it doesn’t disappoint. Over the next couple of days, we take in the occasional site like the falls at Glen Nevis and the monument at Glenfinnan, but mainly we just pad around the old pile in our bathrobes and slippers and luxuriate in the Egyptian 400-thread-count bed linens and the full breadth of Arran aromatic toiletries. And when that gets old, Noah changes the combination on our personal safe. Although we’ve taken to calling ourselves Sir Travis, Lady Sarah, and Prince Noah, our real role models are the Clampetts, as in Jed, not Bobby.

  Wednesday afternoon, I call in a room service lunch of Scottish smoked salmon and champagne and park myself in front of the forty-inch TV. They’re replaying the final round of the ’95 Open, the event won by John Daly the last time it was contested on the Old Course.

  “He doesn’t give a toss,” said Andy of Daly at Dornoch. He’s right. Daly couldn’t hit his driver like that on 18 if he did. I’ve never had the luxury of not giving a toss, don’t even know what it would be like. Maybe it would feel a little like this robe and slippers. And taste a little like this salmon reeled from a local loch. I pull the robe a little snugger and take another bite of smoked fish.

  As I do, I try to ignore the chirping cell phone on the couch. The number is Scottish. Who in Scotland has my number? No one I can think of. I reach for the phone and keep chewing.

  “Good afternoon, this is Angus Farquhar, assistant secretary of the R&A.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The R&A. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Is this Travis McKinley?” On the screen, Daly lines up his final putt on 18, the great stone clubhouse of the R&A rearing up behind the green. So, although it’s five years later, I’m looking at the building from which Angus is calling.

  “Travis, have I caught you at a bad time?”

  “Not really.”

  “I got your number from Tim Finchem and have news that could be of interest. Alex Jeffers, who finished just ahead of you at Loch Lomond, has had a crisis of conscience. He thinks there may have been a double hit on his chip on the tenth hole Friday afternoon at Loch Lomond, and has given up his spot for the Open Championship. You are next in line.” Kind of like an heir to the throne, I think. Sort of like Prince Noah. “That means his exemption is yours, that is, if you want it and can get to St. Andrews in time to tee off at seven-oh-three tomorrow morning.”

  “Angus, can I put you on hold for thirty seconds?”

  I turn to Lady Sarah and Prince Noah, both of whom are also still in their robes, and explain that I have just been offered the last spot in the Open Championship, maybe some kind of trickle-down karma from Tucson. The bad news is that if I accept it, we will have to leave all this behind. Immediately. What should I do?

  45

  WE ATTEND TO THE little details required when you decide to pry yourself from the lap of luxury. We settle our prodigious bill and duke the maids. We repack the van, finding places to stuff the bathrobes and all those little tubes of body wash and shampoo, and pack a last supper picnic of Scottish salmon and rye. It’s 6 p.m. by the time we’re back on the road.

  Ahead of us are 135 miles on the A9, and in our excitement it takes nearly an hour for it to dawn on us that we don’t have a place to stay. Thankfully, we have cell service, and Sarah starts making calls on my phone. We’re not expecting to duplicate the Gate Lodge or those Egyptian linens, and no one can stop us from enjoying our bathrobes, which, by the way, we paid for, but it soon becomes clear that finding a hotel room within 100 miles of St. Andrews the day before the Open Championship is impossible. Everything has been booked for months. “You must be dreaming,” a receptionist tells Sarah.

  “No problem,” I say. “We’ll sleep in the courtesy van.” Unfortunately, it’s the same story with campsites. Finding a spot in an empty field is no easier than getting into the field of the championship itself. There are no last-minute crises of conscience among the thousands of arriving golf fans, and when we pull off the motorway the issue remains unresolved.

  St. Andrews is a charming seaside town that seems far more substantial than its population of 16,000. We pass the border of the Old Course and eye the formidable clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which looks out not just over the Old Course but over the sport itself. I cruise up and down Scores, Market, and North Streets, searching in vain for a space big enough to park a large ambulance.

  After a fruitless half hour, it becomes clear that some creative trespassing may be required, and having successfully snuck onto Augusta National, it’s a pocket of low-level criminality at which I have some expertise and maybe even a little talent. It’s a matter of being attuned to the main chance, and I try to stay positive as we inch along the crowded streets past the packed pubs and overbooked hotels, past the old movie house and the cathedral and down to the harbor. In addition to the golf course, the town is home to the University of St. Andrews, also one of the oldest in the world, and as we circle back from the harbor we find ourselves on a street lined with university offices. On our right, a stately private residence has been converted into the home of its economics department.

  “I’ve always been curious about the St. Andrews School of Economics,” I say, and turn through the impressive gate.

  “Really?” says Sarah. “You’ve never expressed it before.”

  “I know. I’m funny that way.”

  “What aspect of the school are you curious about?”

  “Lots of things, but particularly their parking.”

  In back of the building are two rows of cars, presumably belonging to distinguished faculty, and I discreetly squeeze our la
rge white vehicle in among them.

  “Doesn’t stand out too much,” says Sarah.

  “You know the motto of St. Andrews School of Economics?”

  “No.”

  “It’s in Latin, but the approximate English translation is ‘Money talks and bullshit walks.’”

  “You’re feeling pretty good about yourself, aren’t you, Sir Travis?”

  “If you’re going to tee it up in the Open you better be,” I say. “But there’s still some work to be done. While you three get settled, I’m going to walk over to the R&A.”

  I head out the driveway and up the street. Just over the hill is the course and to the right a row of small hotels. I poke my head into the nearest and ask a waitress if there is a pub frequented by caddies.

  “What pub isn’t frequented by caddies? But I’d start with Dunvegan…just around the corner.”

  At a little past ten, Dunvegan, unlike its neighbors, shows no signs of slowing down. I take a seat at the crowded bar and order a Tennent. My last-minute invite has me feeling both euphoric and overwhelmed and I sip my Tennent and gather my thoughts. My tee time is nine hours away and I still don’t have a caddy. And based on everything I’ve read, no track requires more local knowledge.

  As I survey the room, trying to determine who looks approachable and who stands a chance of sobering up in time, a man about my age taps me on the shoulder and says, “Travis, I can’t believe you actually listened.”

  It takes me a second to recognize him with his clothes on. It’s my neighbor from the driving range in Encino.

  “Seamus! Great to see you. You’ve been on my mind more than you might think. But what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I said you had to go back to the beginning and here you are in St. Andrews, where it all began.”

  “So that’s what you meant. I wasted months on that riddle.”

  “Before we go any further,” says Seamus, “congrats on Loch Lomond. To finish in the money in that company you got to be golfing your ball. I take it you’ve come down the road to watch?”