Playing an Open Championship golf course is a dream for most amateur golfers, but what about ticking off all 10 of the Open Championship courses?
Better yet, what about playing them all in one epic trip? Yeah right…
You may be surprised to learn that all of the Open rota courses allocate a number of slots to visitors, so while it may be prohibitively expensive to arrange tee times on these hallowed grounds, it is, strictly speaking, not impossible.
That’s where this crazy idea all started – a group of mates were dreaming about teeing it up at Muirfield, Troon or St Andrews. Each of us had a real desire to play some links golf in Scotland, England or Northern Ireland and the banter turned real when we started to do some web searches and realised that it was possible to get on to the Open tracks.
A desire for a true links golf experience evolved into an epic odyssey to play all 10 of the Open Championship courses on the current rota on one tour. Initially, it was difficult to secure tee times, but a fair bit of perseverance (in some cases bordering on harassment), we began to tick off slots on some of the great courses around the UK.
Incredibly, we even managed to arrange the trip without the use of a tour operator, although I’d imagine it would have been a heck of a lot simpler if we had.
So starting on 12 May, we will traverse the UK with our golf bags and an obscene amount of wet weather gear. Each player is also taking a mountain of golf balls in case the gorse takes its toll.
But let me introduce you to the motley crew who make up the dream trip: for the first half of the tour the fourball will be made up of Bossco (handicap 11, Bryanston), The Wess (handicap 10, Bryanston), Smiley (handicap 7, Serengeti) and The Good Doctor (handicap 7, Royal Port Alfred). This crew will play five of the 10 Open Championship courses (provided the ballot at St Andrews Old gives us a slot).
The schedule for this once in a lifetime golfing and travel experience currently looks like this:
12 May – Dundonald Links
13 May – Turnberry
14 May – Royal Troon
15 May – Muirfield
16 May – St Andrews Old
17 May – St Andrews Jubilee
18 May – Carnoustie
19 May – Kingsbarns
20 May – Royal Portrush
21 May – Royal St George
22 May – Royal Birkdale
23 May – Royal Liverpool
24 May – Royal Lytham and St Annes.
Our preparation for the tour has been considerable. The UK has been experiencing some pretty wild weather and there is no chance that we will be going over there underprepared. Most South African golf stores don’t stock the type of kit you need to prep for Scottish or Northern Irish weather, but we managed to locate mitts, thermals, rain gloves, rain suits and ziplock bags for the wallets and phones. Golfing in South Africa is certainly a lot simpler as you don’t need to walk the fairways in multiple layers of gear. We are all hoping that the weather will be kind to us – at times.
Over the next 14 days, The Good Doctor will share some of our experiences of playing the Open courses with you – the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s been a huge effort to coordinate this trip, but it will all be worth it when we peg it up at Dundonald Links, the home of the Scottish Open as our first warm-up round. We can’t wait.
