Killick at Carnoustie

"Lykewakes he exercisit the gowf, and ofttimes past to Barry Links, quhan the wadsie was for drink.... This was the yeer of God 1527, or there abouts.

THIS is the first record of anyone playing golf at Carnoustie, referring to the illiterate sheriff of Angus, Sir Robert Maule, who loved his gowf as much as his hawking especially when the wager, or wadsie, was for drink.

As the world's finest players assemble for the 2007 Open Championship they should toast Sir Robert for bringing the game to the Angus coast. They will certainly remember their visit to what former champion Gary Player described as 'the most challenging course in the world'.

Arriving in the dull little seaside town with its identikit houses, there is nothing to alert you for the horrors and joys that may lie ahead on the Carnoustie championship links.

Most first-time visitors spot Simpsons, the oldest golf shop in the world, with its historic golf-umbrella-shaped roof, that opened for business only 38 years after Alex Robertson of St Andrews completed his design for 10 holes on the other side of the road back in 1842.

Crossing the road to the car park at the rear of the white and monolithic Carnoustie hotel with rain falling in stair rods and a 30mph westerly wind blowing is not the best way to contemplate one of the finest links in the world. Nor indeed play it.

Sandwiched like so many great Scottish courses between the beach and the railway line running along the east coast, Carnoustie has had many of its fine old trees cut down by the Royal and Ancient to accommodate grandstands for championships.

The course is shaped like a bulls horns starting on the tip at one end before playing round to the far tip then coming back again. Two burns, Jockies and Barry, snake their way insidiously through the course.

In 1910 golf historian Bernard Darwin wrote: There really is some justification for the nervous golfer who has water on the brain after a round at Carnoustie." Perhaps Darwin had some phantom premonition of the paddling Frenchman, Jean Van de Velde, in 1999.

The Barry Burn can be glimpsed on the left-hand side of the very first hole, when adrenalin is squirting through the stomach like the aftermath of a particularly fierce curry. At 401 yards the flag looks miles away and there is a just a glimpse of the first of Carnousties fiendish bunkers out on the right at 250 yards.

I stood on the 1st in a friendly fourball, and my knees were knocking, my mouth was dry and my palms wet with perspiration as I prepared to tackle the course where Ben Hogan achieved his Open victory in his only visit to Britain in 1953. His ghost still stalks the place.

All I wanted to do was get the ball off the tee and out into play. Nailing a drive that cut low through the wind and came to rest around 210 yards out, I let out a huge exhalation of relief. Game on.

After nine holes into what always seemed the prevailing wind playing solid golf off my 13 handicap I had taken 53 strokes.
The 520-yard 6th was known simply as Long but renamed Hogan's Alley after the model driving exhibition the great man gave in 53, piercing the heart of the fairway between the out of bounds and two more giant fairway bunkers leering at you from the middle of the fairway.

I hit a cracking drive there, followed by a slightly pushed two iron into fluffy rough. I played cautiously out with a punched five iron and still had 100 yards to go.
I peered into my bag and pulled out a seven iron, which I nailed. It soared skywards in the howling wind and dropped on the front of the green which is long and thin like all Carnoustie greens. After traversing the remaining 45 feet with three putts I walked off with a seven having not hit a really bad shot.

Mr Hogan would not have approved.

It was on the 10th, a 446-yard par four which slopes gently upwards with two nasty pot bunkers to the left of the green and a large tree by the edge of the Barry Burn on the right, that Ben Hogan reached for his four iron to play his second when English caddy Cecil Timms took his life in his hands.

He put his hand over Hogans on the four iron, saying: The winds changed up there. Its a two iron. Hogan glared at him, thought it over, and took out the two iron before addressing the shot. Then he paused, glared at Timms again and said: If this goes through the green, I'm going to bury this club in your forehead. Hogan hit the two iron to 10 feet.

Timms, who was later to work in America, said: "He never thanked me and I didnt expect him to. He just looked at it as if I was doing my job."

At 17 over par for the front nine, I knew that I had two chances of shooting somewhere in the low 30s to salvage my score over the back nine and slim had just left town.

I was about to encounter the toughest finishing holes in world golf. From the regular tees, the 14th is a 468-yard par four surrounded by gorse with bunkers everywhere and a blind shot into the green; 16 is a 245-yard par three; 17 features the Burn at 200 and 240 yards and a tiny green.

And at 18, not only me, but my three colleagues as well, paid our unintentional tribute to the gallant Frenchman by lashing our approaches into the burn in front of the green.

I walked off with something looking more like a solid cricket innings than a golf score despite having hit only a handful of poor shots. And my feelings on the day?

I absolutely loved every magical moment of this most wonderful and tormenting of courses and cannot wait to go back.