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| Executive Travel |
Scottish Retreat, American Style
James Y. Bartlett
12/01/2003
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For those who venture away from St. Andrews Bay, there are world-class restaurants in and around the town. David Wilson’s Peat Inn, located at a tiny crossroads some seven miles from St. Andrews, annually wins rosettes and stars from European gourmands. A branch of the famed Seafood Restaurant from nearby St. Monans recently opened on the seafront in St. Andrews, and the modern, glass-walled room has proved hugely popular. Just down the A-917 trunk road, in the village of Anstruther, the Cellar has achieved renown as one of Scotland’s premiere seafood restaurants.
And when all other possible activities have been exhausted, of course, there is golf. On the courses of St. Andrews, we can test our characters, form and reform alliances, and cement relationships. The Scots, who have been playing the game for more than 600 years, say one can learn a great deal about a man’s character over the course of 18 holes.
St. Andrews Bay encompasses two golf courses that look as though they were laid out by Old Tom Morris a century ago. Built on the rugged headlands overlooking the sea, cut by a deep ravine, and surrounded by the usual bits of gorse, heather, and tall marram, the courses give American golfers the true Scottish experience. Both the Torrance and Devlin courses are treeless, open to the gusting winds, with all the bumpy, rolling fairways and ball-collecting bunkers that make Scottish golf so unfair, and so enthralling.
Native son Sam Torrance, a one-time Ryder Cup captain, laid out his course on a former potato farm. Some of his greens are protected by devilish "wee burns" or creeks, while others are surrounded by stone walls, another Scottish characteristic. The Bruce Devlin-designed course opens with some wide-open holes that favor big hitters. However, it soon moves across the deep Kinnock’s Den ravine to a windswept plateau high above the sea, and control and strategy become far more important than length.
Being an international center of golf, St. Andrews boasts numerous courses, but most of us have our hearts set on the famed Old Course, which begins and ends at the edge of town. Unfortunately, while nominally a public course, tee times are at a premium. Huge blocks of tee times are sold to tour operators and local organizations, but a certain percentage is held out each day for distribution through The Ballot, a computerized hat into which hopeful golfers toss their names. The names of the next day’s lucky winners are posted all around town by 2:30 each afternoon.
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