“A Hacker Plays The Big Ones” is a short story authored by Steven R. Roberts. The short story, written two months following the trip, tells the tale of Roberts and his friend, Bob Blackman’s, golf odyssey around Scotland in the 1970s where the two played four of most historic courses in the game: St. Andrews, Carnoustie, Muirfield and Gleneagles.

We have broken the short story into a four-parter and will publish Part 3. of the story in the coming days.

Read Part 1 here.

The next day we played 36 holes on the Gleneagles King’s and Queen’s courses. I’m writing this in my hotel room while Bob takes a bath. It would certainly be too bad if he drowned, but I don’t want to come across as a bitter loser. It’s just that he had a brilliant 74 at the difficult King’s course this morning followed by a steady 78 at the Queen’s this afternoon.

It’s a bit hard to appreciate the beauty of this place with tears in your eyes, but I must say it is spectacular. The two courses are set in the rolling Scottish hills, and the clubhouse inside and out is impressive.

Toward the end of the second round, I must admit I was knackered from climbing the hills and extricating my ball and myself from the deep traps. We’re both suddenly glad we didn’t wait 20 more years to make this trip. The names of the holes give an extra touch to the place. Wee Bogle, Canty Lye, Devil’s Creel, Waup’s Nest and Blink Bonnie are indications of the dangers of the King’s course.

The turf and overall course manicure at Gleneagles was a pleasant surprise in that the conditions were similar to the finest U.S. courses. This contrasts with yesterday’s seaside links course of Carnoustie, with its relatively flat fairways and hard greens. On the other hand, I didn’t come all this way to play a U.S. course. Not to worry, because both courses have a very different growth called “heather” in their roughs. If you are lucky enough to find your ball in this wiry stuff, we found that you needed to blast out sideways to recover. It was like trying to hit a shot out of barbed wire.

One of the other distinguishing characteristics of UK golf is the speed of play. They play a get-up-and-hit style that I found exhausting at first when we moved to England but by this time I had found it refreshing. Bob and I played Carnoustie in three hours yesterday and, excluding a one-hour break for lunch, we played 36 holes in six hours today. To add to the physical challenges of the game, these three-hour rounds are done walking and carrying our bags. There were no golf carts on the island and very few caddies.

I already mentioned Bob’s two scores for the day, and purposely didn’t mention mine. Bob is left-handed, and he has a wooden-shafted putter. If that isn’t bad enough, he knocked in everything in sight for his 74 while I three-putted three times for an 80 on the King’s and 79 on the afternoon round on the Queen’s course.

I’m now 8 shots back of Bob, who’s 20 shots behind Tom Watson’s winning pace. The good news is that I didn’t jump off the Perth Queen’s bridge as we strolled over the Tay River for dinner. What am I saying? I’m having the time of my life and tomorrow we play St. Andrews. I just need rest. I briefly considered a plan to break Bob’s wooden-shafted putter over his sandy-haired head the next day.

That night I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I got up and walked across the room to Bob’s bag, which was propped in the corner next to his bed. I carefully removed the wooden-shafted devil and took it out into the hall. I laid down a glass from the bathroom and stroked a few putts.

The putter was left-handed, so I had to stroke the putts from the wrong side. I put the first three balls in the glass and backed up so that I was putting from the door of the room next to ours to our room door. The carpet had a slight break left to right, but I made two out of three 12-footers. This really feels good in my hands. No wonder Bob is beating me.

I backed up to another doorway and made two out of three 25-footers. Now the carpet was breaking just over a foot. Backing up again, this will be the ultimate test as to whether this thing is illegal and I should confiscate it.

I’m stroking the first 50-footer when an older lady in her white nightgown comes out of one of the rooms along the putting path. I’ve got my head down, concentrating on making a smooth stroke; I got a chill up my neck realizing the ball was on pace and line perfectly toward the hole. I looked up to see the lady rubbing her eyes as she stepped on the ball and sprawled out across the hallway. Her nightgown billowed like a small parachute as she screamed and fell to the slightly-slanted hallway carpeting.

“Oh, ma’am, I’m so sorry,” I said, hurrying to her side.

“I heard a scream and opened my door to find this man standing over this poor woman,” the man from the other side of the hall said to the constable. “He was standing there with a red face in his whitey tidy undershorts and a club in his hand. My friend next door and I blocked his attempts to get to his room until you got here, constable.”

Bob had heard the commotion in the hall, and he’d brought my trousers out to me, but it was too late.

So, that’s how the day I had looked forward to for so long. The day I was scheduled to play St. Andrews started out with breakfast in the Perth city jail.

“How you doing?” Bob asked, coming to the visitor’s room about 8:30 that morning.

“Oh, God, Bob, it’s lucky we got a later tee time,” I said. “Can you get me out in time?”

“I’ll see. I suppose you have some explanation as to what you were doing walking the halls in your skivvies with my putter at 3:20 in the morning?” Bob asked.

“Never mind that right now,” I said. “We can talk about it on the long drive home in a couple of days.”

“Well, I don’t know what happened with that woman or my putter, but I’ve called St. Andrews and changed our reservation for tonight to separate bedrooms.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes. Besides, you snore.”

“Whatever. Just get me out of here in time to hit a few practice balls, and I’ll be okay.”

“I’m meeting with the constable in 10 minutes,” Bob said. “Let’s hope I can convince him you were doing something rational out there in that hallway. Do you have any words to help me make him understand?”

“No.”

Two hours later, Bob was driving as we turned off the main street in St. Andrews onto narrow Links Avenue. I put on my golf shoes as Bob drove past the Old Niblick Restaurant and pulled into the small parking lot 12 minutes before our tee time of 1:33 pm.

Coming soon: A Hacker Plays The Big Ones Pt. 3