My Life in St Andrews

Adventures with Digby…

1975 –

As I jump the fence as a 15 year old boy, I have no idea how
lucky I am to play the Old Course at St Andrews. My boss Raymond at the time, a
cobbler shop owner, introduced me to golf. He gave me a Thursday afternoon off
one day and I asked him, “What do you do with a Thursday afternoon off?” 

He replied, “We play golf Alan.”  I decided to look more into this and ended up
purchasing a half set of golf clubs from a catalog company (catalogs or
magazines were the first internet. They were delivered to the house and people
could look through them and find the product they needed). My set consisted of
a driver, a 3 wood, 3,5,7, 9 and sand iron, a putter and a bag. A cost of
approximately 2pound a week for a year.

St Andrews had a small piece of ground on the outskirts
which lay behind the 18th hole at the Eden Course, where I started
“practicing golf.”  No idea what I was
doing, I started chopping away at golf balls that Raymond had for practice. Back
in the day, we hit the balls, and picked them up ourselves. It was important to
mark the balls with your own markings. 
As I learned from my first visit to the practice ground, and hitting
balls all over the place, an older gentleman approached me and said, “son, what
are your balls marked with?” I gave him a vague look back as I had no idea what
he was talking about. I responded, “well, most of them have Dunlop 65 on
them.”  He replied, “I think you need to
write your initials on them from now on.” 
I also learned quickly that day that retrieving practice balls was
dangerous. With a reply from another gentleman, “son, have you never heard of
grouping your golf balls?” I proceeded to collect the balls ducking and dodging
the other golfers firing at their targets. Funny thing, I’ve only been hit
twice to this day and both times were on the golf course.

After a couple of months of practice, I decided to venture
to the course with my best friend, Digby (my loyal dog).  As I teed up at the first hole of the Eden Course
(one of the seven St Andrews courses), it was late afternoon, nobody around the
tee (thank goodness), I hit my ball up the fairway.  Digby heard the crack of the club hitting the
ball and bolted down the fairway in the direction of the ball. Not more than
twenty yards into the run, he lost interest in my ball, but found another golf ball
sitting on the side of the 18th green which he stole, much to the
disgust of the gentleman playing the 18th hole in a competition. I
walked down the fairway to hear cursing and swearing at the missing ball and
Digby running away with it in its mouth. 

Off to a great start...