Swilcan Bridge Golfers

St Andrews, Scotland

In the daytime, St Andrews’ expanse of interlocking links courses is covered with golfers who are scattered in clusters and scurry like ants. They are on a mission, carrying heavy bags on their backs, picking them up, putting them down, going from green to green, zig-zagging from bunker to bunker, walking straight down the fairway. Eyes on the ball, eyes on the hole, eyes on the clubhouse, and back into the nest. As night draws, however, a peace descends with the darkness. Damp solemnity is cast over the Old Course. Misty rain rests in the air, through which the R&A and Hamilton Grand throw out orange light with distant authority.

But dedicated ants work overtime. When my parents and I were on a night-time stroll, we met a father and son from Kentucky, USA and took a photograph for them on the Swilcan Bridge. Golf lovers and golf pilgrims, this was the last night of their once-in-a-lifetime, Scottish golfing tour. As we talked, two more people crossed the bridge and emerged from the darkness.

“Are you’s takin’ pictures for everybody?” a gentleman said. “You again!”

Into the silence erupted laughter, greetings, stories of birdies and the rejoicings of meeting and re-meeting. It transpired that the father and son had played Kingsbarns golf course with this husband and wife just a few days ago.

So many photos, famous and personal, have been taken on that specific spot of course. If we could capture a conversation, a moment, an encounter, a life and a relationship as simply as one can take a photograph, this evening meeting would have to be framed!

A generation game

I asked the father and son about where they got their love of golf from. “I mean, I got it from him,” the son said. “As far as I can remember, going back 3, 4, 5 years old.”

“I cut him off a club and he took to it like a duck to water,” the father recounted. “I mean, he loved it. In fact, before he was in the first grade, he would ride in the cart with us, and when we got to the green he’d take the pin and out and he’d put it back in. He started learning to make his numbers and keep score, and by the time he was in the first grade, he could add those scores up.”

“That’s how I learned math - the golf course... I actually cut school off early to go to the golf course and they let me go!”

The son’s roots were in the father and the father’s roots went further still. “I had a friend when I was young who was a member there at the country club, and he said you need to go play golf. So I did. I went with him one day and I liked it. A couple of weeks later he said let’s go and play golf again, and he didn’t have to ask the second time,” the father explained. “My Dad was a farmer and had also just picked up being a postal carrier. He and Mom asked me that year ‘If we join the country club, will you play golf?’... That’s all they had to say, and the rest is history!” After a life of college, teaching and retirement, the father was offered the job of greenskeeper at the country club, and he took it.

“He’s our old Tom Morris!” the son exclaimed.

Drenched in that rich warmth and enthusiasm unique to a wholesome Southern drawl, our little group talked and talked until the lights of the Jigger Inn and of home called us to go our separate ways, back inside for what was left of the night. But, one thing was left unchecked on our new acquaintances’ grand tour list. “There’s one great reason to come back,” the father began... “to play the Old Course,” his son carried on.