| Sports Fiction posted June 5, 2025 |
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A day at the cradle of golf
The Road Hole
by Jim Wile
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
The wind is in my face now, and it starts to drizzle—again. The rain has been on and off for most of the day. The temperature has dropped to a cool 50 degrees, and I shiver occasionally. Time to put the rain jacket on. Angus, my caddie, hands it to me without being asked.
I stop walking when we reach the championship tee. Angus gives me a withering look and shakes his head.
“Just for practice,” I say.
He looks away and mutters, “They’ve allus got tae try it.”
He hands me the driver. “Aim fer the ‘O,’ laddie.”
The 17th hole—The Road Hole—here at The Old Course at St. Andrews is perhaps the toughest, most unusual hole in golf. From the championship tee, you must aim over the Old Course Hotel to hit the fairway on the other side. Is there another hole in the world where you must shoot over a hotel? The large sign on the side says “Old Course Hotel,” and the ideal line is over the “O.”
I neck my just-for-fun drive, and it slices into the side of the hotel, out-of-bounds. Angus shakes his head again as we move forward to the regular tee that’s aimed to skirt the hotel. I tee up my real ball and slash at it as a sudden gust strikes us full in the face. The ball goes nowhere.
Angus says, “Yer standin’ too close tae the ball… after ye hit it.” Wiseass. He’s been my caddie many times and never hesitates to slip in the needle. He’s one of the regulars. Tall and wiry, he wears a flat cap and a waterproof jacket over woolen plus fours. The archetypal older caddie.
As we walk to my ball, I have to stay upwind of him. I don’t think he’s changed his clothes for weeks, plus he reeks of alcohol from the frequent nips he takes from the flask in his pocket.
The rain stops for now, and a brief hole in the clouds opens up as the sun peeks through. The wind also slackens. “A great day for golf, eh, Angus?”
“Is that wit yer playin’ then?” he says, deadpan. Always with the needle.
My ball is in the fairway, and I ask for my 3-wood. I know he disapproves since I haven’t hit a decent one all day. I take a mammoth swipe at the ball and watch helplessly as it duck-hooks into the gorse, left of the fairway. “Damn!”
The billowing masses of yellow flowers hide anything below, but somehow Angus finds the ball beneath them. There’s no way I can extricate it from this dense shrubbery, so I take an unplayable and drop it in the rough.
Now I’m faced with the quintessential nightmare of every golfer who’s ever played The Old Course—a shot over the Road Hole Bunker to the narrow green nestled between it and the stone wall bordering the right side of the hole. This craggy, ancient, shoulder-high sandstone wall marks the out-of-bounds.
I turn to Angus and say, “6-iron.”
“It’s a 5, laddie.”
“You sure?”
“Aye, and I’d bet ma flask on it.”
He hands me the 5-iron, and I strike a beauty. As it arcs high into the air, heading straight for the pin, I can hear the angels singing hosannas, but then the wind gusts and carries it to the right. It lands right of the green, across the road, and a foot from the stone wall. Oh, the agony!
When we get to the ball, Angus can see the wheels turning in my head. “Don’t do it.”
“I’ve got to try it.” What we are hinting at is my caroming the ball off the wall and onto the green since there is no room to take a proper backswing.
“Are ye wearin’ a cup?” He has seen many a player try this and regret it.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I say as I address the ball. I strike it cleanly, and the ball caroms as planned, but I can’t stop my club in time, and sparks fly as it strikes the wall. I turn quickly to watch my ball bounding toward the green. Once on the surface, it rolls too fast and disappears over the far edge, heading for certain death down in the Road Hole Bunker.
“Shit!” I look up at Angus, grin ruefully, and shrug.
Together we make our way down to the bunker. It’s a gaping maw at the side of the green with a near-vertical sod-stacked face that I can just see over as I stand in the sand. Angus gives me the evil eye as I contemplate going for the pin, but even I know that I can’t pull the shot off. He hands me a wedge, and I benignly pitch out to the front of the green, miles from the hole.
Angus rakes the bunker and makes his way to tend the pin while I trudge to my ball and line up the mammoth putt. It must be 100 feet. With a firm rap, the ball scoots forward up the long slope to the shelf where the hole resides. I run after it to see where it ends up. I played ten feet of break, and as the ball slows, it finally turns toward the hole. Angus removes the pin, and we watch with bated breath as the ball creeps the last few feet to the hole… and stops on the lip of the cup. As we stand there watching, it makes one final half turn and drops in. I leap into the air and punch a fist. Angus just looks at me and says, “Even a blind squirrel is right twice a day, eh laddie?”
I’m 102 years old and haven’t touched a club in 30 years. I’ve never been to The Old Course, but I’ve played it a hundred different ways in my mind.
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© Copyright 2025. Jim Wile All rights reserved.
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