The Castle Course is south of St. Andrews overlooking the town and St. Andrews Bay
Stop the Presses. Everything bad thing you have ever read about the Castle Course in St. Andrews is dead wrong. It is one of the most tremendous tracks of golf I have ever played and I would put it on par with Carnoustie as a really tough, but fair, challenge of your golfing skills. Okay, there are maybe three or four greens I would blow up and re-build, starting with the incredibly penal #3 hole, a par three where it is virtually impossible to put a tee shot near the pin. There are a couple of other tricked-up greens, but the overwhelming first impression when you walk off #18 is “What an awesome golf course. I can’t wait to play it again.” The course is only two years old and today I would rate it, by far, the absolute best of the St. Andrews Links Trust courses. It is significantly better than the Old Course, better than the New, and more playable than the Jubilee course.
The course was designed by Scotsman David McLay Kidd, and opened to controversy due to its difficulty
On almost every hole you are met with a series of challenges that causes you to really think about how you are going to play this hole. Not a lot of fairway bunkers, but many “slight” doglegs around the wispy rough that gives pause while you think about where you need to put your drive, and how to play your next shot in order to open up the green as much as you can. And once you have managed your way to the green, the fun really starts. My first time out I was way long, or woefully short on all my putts, resulting in a score substantially above my handicap. The pace of the putt is not easy to get your first time out.
The first time in St Andrews, play the Old Course, the second, play The Castle
For decent hitters, your score will be made or broken on or near the greens. It’s the kind of course where you know you can play better than your score. I think it requires multiple plays to comprehend the subtitles of the layout and the difficulty of the greens.
But there are distractions. We played late in the afternoon in a grey, warm, misty Scottish rain. The weather created an almost infinity effect between the sky and the North Sea, resulting in a view that made the horizon almost invisible. These are the best golfing conditions in Scotland. Luckily we had no wind. They say the wind makes this course really hard. You also have the beautiful views of the town of St. Andrews and the church steeples as you are teeing off on 18.
It takes only five minutes to get bad press and many years to overcome it But if any golf course ever deserved a second look, it’s the Castle Course in St Andrews. Serious golfers will love it.
Bill Bauman contributed this review. He’s from Orlando, FL, but lives in St Andrews during the summers, and details his expeditions on his blog.
