"If you think Lamlash is hilly," laughs the cow-pelter at lunch, "wait until your next round." I've told him that I'm heading five miles down the coast to Whiting Bay Golf Club, perched high above the town of the same name. When I arrive, the day has turned drizzly. There isn't a soul in sight, so I pay homage to the Honesty Box and head for the hills.
Yikes! By the time I have registered double bogey on Postage Stamp Jr. and reached the fifth tee, I'm exhausted. Thankfully, at this point the course tacks across an alpine meadow bordered by majestic evergreens. These holes are agreeable enough, if unmemorable. The happy trip downhill is interrupted by one last climb to the fabulously funky green on the seventeenth hole, aptly named the Cauldron. This volcanic bowl would do any miniature golf course proud.
After a forty-five-minute drive around the south end of the island, I stumble into the cozy bar at the Blackwaterfoot Lodge. Although I am tempted to park myself on a stool for hours, genial proprietor Ian Relf persuades me to order dinner and prods me into the homey dining room. Afterward I hear the siren song luring me back to the bar, but thirty-six holes of goatherd golf has taken its toll and I retire to my room.
Walter Hagen played at Mach- rie Bay Golf Club in the 1930s. Legend has it that he was planning to play the vaunted Machrie course on the Isle of Islay but found himself at this nine-holer on Arran's west coast by mistake. Undaunted, he played anyway—or so the story goes—circling the course twice in a record fifty-three strokes.
As the scorecard proudly points out, Turnberry co-architect and 1883 British Open winner Willie Fernie is credited with Machrie Bay's design. At first I wonder if ole Willie sketched out the links at the end of a long night in the pub. But as I am quickly reminded, a four-club wind can turn the most prosaic layout into a stern test of golf. The sixth and seventh run side by side and measure an identical 280 yards, with one tiny difference: The gale that's at my back on the sixth buffets me in the face on the seventh. My scorecard littered with fives, I hang it up after nine. Hagen's record is safe for another day.
Last stop is the Shiskine Golf and Tennis Club, the best known of Arran's courses. Its fame is due in no small part to the fact that it has just twelve holes. Expectations—and curiosity—running high, I pull into the windswept parking lot. There I am greeted by the starter, who had advised me by phone to "save the best for last." She has a ready response for every question about Shiskine's atypical hole total. "Think how much happier wives would be if all courses were twelve holes," she chortles.
I get my golf pass stamped and pick up a marvelous course descriptor chock full of exhortations, advice, underlining, highlighting and a forest of exclamation points. As I set off down the first fairway, I take in the sweeping view of the Kintyre Peninsula across Kilbrannan Sound, enjoying the springy turf underfoot. The blind shots come fast and furious—challenging but not unfair. At the far end of the course, beneath the majestic Drumadoon Point headland, I encounter two hikers looking for the King's Cave, one of several Scottish caverns where Robert the Bruce is said to have had his fourteenth-century spider epiphany ("If at first you don't succeed, try, try again").
By this point, I have had an epiphany of my own: Shiskine is the real deal, the jewel in Arran's crown. I am enchanted by the Crows Nest, a blind pitch over a steep bank. I am humbled by the Himalayas, with a huge gorse-covered hill between tee and green. And I am wowed by the Hollows, surely the only par three that goes up, then down, then back up again. Walking off the twelfth green, I realize that there's one problem with saving the best for last. I want to play Shiskine again—and again. But alas, the ferry to the mainland awaits.
Comments (0)
Open / Close