1. On Tuesday morning, I walked into a quaint, little coffee shop in town, ordered an iced Americano, and asked the very nice woman who took my order what felt like an innocuous question: Hey, what should I do or see in Troon when I’m not taking in the golf?
I was greeted with a friendly-but-slightly-mortified grimace.
“Oh my,” she said. “There really isn’t much.”
One of the quirks of the Open Championship is that seemingly every year, it returns to a sleepy little town (usually by the sea) where a major sporting event should not — thanks to the modern logic of commerce and convenience — be held. The American mind could never wrap its arms around a place like Troon, a town of roughly 15,500 people. There are a few hotels, a few pubs, a kebab house, a Domino's pizza, a handful of very old churches, a couple of highly-regarded butcher shops and a pier. That’s not entirely it, of course, but it’s close. I tried to get dinner Monday night at a hotel restaurant with a promising menu and was told the kitchen had been closed for an hour. It was 8 p.m.
Americans have a tendency to over-romanticize some aspects of the Open, especially when we would never put those same quirks into practice in our own lives. But there is something hilarious about hosting arguably the biggest championship in golf in a place where your options for dining at 9 p.m. are often one of three fish and chips houses. Imagine the NFL hosting the Super Bowl every few years in a city only slightly bigger than Shelby, Montana (that’s where Cody grew up). Imagine Jerry Jones or James Dolan taking a group of actors, agents and influencers to the best local chippy shack, having greasy haddock and a Johnny Walker Blue. Try that in a small town!
And yet, places like Troon, Carnoustie, Hoylake and Sandwich navigate all the chaos and crowds way better than American cities do.
When the U.S. Open takes place on Long Island (Shinnecock or Bethpage), traffic becomes a snarling nightmare. Same with the PGA Championship, as Louisville recently proved. The Ryder Cup gets more bloated and corporate every year, its original mission now buckling under the weight of a half-dozen galas.
Yet at the Open every year, little Scottish and English towns, centuries old, pull off what is essentially a logistical magic trick. Buses run on time, despite transporting people down tiny narrow roads with crooked stone walls always looming. Local golf courses are happy to open up tee times to visitors (and media). Pubs are happy to have you, but they typically won’t stay open late, even if it means sacrificing revenue. Restaurants feel like they cater to locals, not tourists. There are some exceptions, of course, like in St. Andrews, where Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake are taking over a local cinema and turning it into a gastro pub likely to feature simulators and duckpin bowling. But for the most part, places that host the Open don’t have gaudy steakhouses or nightclubs or concert venues. They don’t pretend to be something they’re not, and while that’s inconvenient and maybe even a little boring at times, it’s also charming.
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It’s not all charming and quirky, of course. It can be depressing when the sun doesn’t shine. Not every caddie here is a wise old sage with charming stories; many of them are wrestling with demons and disappointments. Scotland, just like the United States, is flummoxed by how to deal with a rise in opioid addictions. The food is — to put it nicely — not particularly healthy. There is an oft-told joke in Troon when tourists ask what they should do while in town: Take the train to Prestwick.
Yet the honesty of these little towns remains refreshing. When my barista handed me my coffee — with milk instead of half and half, because cream simply isn’t a thing here in Scotland — my new friend offered one final suggestion.
“I suppose you could ride the big wheel,” she said, gesturing across the street at what was, in fact, a giant ferris wheel that sadly didn’t seem to be in operation. “Or visit the beach. But only on a nice day. It’s kind of a nothing place.”
2. I flew into Edinburgh this week, which was way less expensive than flying into Glasgow, plus it allowed me to take a Delta flight and avoid the nightmarish situation I had last year when British Airways held my golf clubs hostage for a week. Because of that, I got an invitation to play North Berwick on Monday, a course that has been on my most wanted list for about a decade.
A decade ago, North Berwick was the kind of golf course only real ones put on their list when visiting Scotland, but these days, it’s as coveted as any tee time a tourist can snag. (All the daily tee times for non-members are booked through 2025.) NLU visited it for Tourist Sauce back in Season 2, an episode that’s worth a re-watch. I won’t bore you with the details of my round, other than to share that I didn’t hit either of its famous rock walls, and I only lost one ball, a dreadful double cross pull that went out-of-bounds on the 8th hole. I also drove the 18th green! (Then I three-putted for par. Whomp whomp.) My swing remains a graceless blur of arms and thunder, and I promise it makes me cringe when I see it on a social clip far more than it makes you cringe. I’m recovering from a very bad stretch and back to shooting in the mid-to-low 80s again, which is enough to enjoy the game. I don’t need a world-class golf course to enjoy myself, but the hipster take that North Berwick is one of the funnest courses on earth to play is actually spot on. It’s the rare course that really does deserve its reputation.
I also learned that guests, if they can get a tee time without a member, are going to pay somewhere between 185 pounds and 285 pounds for the round, depending on the year, but if you play with a member it’s all of 15 pounds! I think I’m still in shock, having recently paid $215 to play Baltimore Country Club, and $130 to bring a guest out at my own Maryland club, Rolling Road.
I’m sure the general managers at those two would be happy to explain how the economic realities aren’t the same, that North Berwick can charge what it does for guests because it is such a coveted tee time around the world, and that I’m being naive if I think it’s a fair comparison. And maybe they’re right.
But it’s also a shining example of how unwelcoming American country clubs can be compared to clubs in Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland. A cousin of mine was recently on vacation here, and he called Muirfield on two days' notice and asked if he could play a round. They said of course, come join us on Tuesday. It was expensive, but the opportunity to play was there at Scotland’s most exclusive country club.
Scotland has its complexities, but it certainly does golf better than most countries.
3. You probably saw the snippet already where Tiger Woods couldn’t resist taking a not-so-subtle dig at Colin Montgomerie this week when asked about Monty’s belief that he should retire already because he’s not enjoying himself and he’s obviously not going to enjoy Troon. But in case you didn’t, here is Tiger’s quote:
“Well, as a past champion, I’m exempt until I’m 60,” Woods said. “Colin’s not. He’s not a past champion, so he’s not exempt. So he doesn’t get the opportunity to make that decision. I do.”
As often is the case these days when any athlete says anything even mildly interesting, it gets framed by the press in the most ridiculous terms. Here is a sampling of how the press (of which I’m obviously a member, so take that however you like) labeled Tiger’s response.
“Tiger Woods’ brutal response to Monty” —Daily Mail
“Tiger Woods and Colin Montgomerie in Open War of Words” —Telegraph
“Tiger Woods hits back at Monty” —Sky Sports
“Tiger jabs at Monty with 6 sentences and a smirk” —Golf.com
“Tiger Woods barbecues Colin Montgomerie in war of words” —Golfweek
As anyone who was in Tiger’s press conference can attest, or anyone who watched it on video can attest, it was a pretty mild rebuke. It would be a stretch to think of it as any kind of takedown. In general, I hate the cliched response from athletes that everything they say gets turned into clickbait, but this was a pretty good example of how every interaction between athletes is framed like someone is getting owned or getting put in their place.
Media criticism aside, I get why Monty would say what he did because it’s something fans voice all the time. It can be uncomfortable to watch a great athletes age, and there have been times in the last two years when it’s been uncomfortable to watch Tiger limp around the golf course. But the idea that he’s damaging his legacy by continuing to play into his 50s is dumb. You don’t get to make that choice for Tiger. I am not entirely blameless in this narrative. I once penned an ESPN column suggesting he turn to coaching instead of doing further damage to his body, but that was before his miracle back surgery. I don’t regret the sentiment behind it. Even Tiger thought he was done prior to that surgery. Now I think he should play for as long as he likes.
And as much as he feeds into the narrative that he won’t be out there unless he truly believes he has a chance to win, some of that feels like bluster. Roger Federer used to tell the people who wanted him to retire once he started to slip that they didn’t understand him at all, and I think his quote sums up how Tiger probably feels but can’t publicly admit.
"Sometimes you're just happy playing," Federer said. "Some people, some media, don't understand that it's OK just to play tennis and enjoy it. They always think you have to win everything, it always needs to be a success story, and if it's not, obviously, what is the point? Maybe you have to go back and think, 'Why have I started playing tennis? Because I just like it.' It's actually sort of a dream hobby that became somewhat of a job. Some people just don't get that, ever."
As embarrassing as it might be for a 46-year-old man to quote Taylor Swift, this lyric from The Tortured Poets Department probably captures exactly how Tiger feels these days:
I’ll tell you something about my good name; it’s mine alone to disgrace.
Kevin Van Valkenburg is the Editorial Director of No Laying Up
Email him at kvv@nolayingup.com
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