A Course Called Scotland by Tom Coyne

Author:Tom Coyne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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My name in Scottish Gaelic is Tòmas or Tam, and it means twin. I don’t have a twin, nor did I hear much Gaelic at all in Scotland (supposedly it was still spoken in the Outer Hebrides, where I was headed at trip’s end, but the Scots’ erstwhile language was known by only 1 percent of the population). Plenty of Toms had left their mark on golf—few golfers are more popular in the British Isles than Tom Watson, and the Morrises elevate the Tom brand for sure. It was a fair golf name as far as forenames went, but there were some first names that just sounded like six under.

You can’t be called Bubba and hack. Bob, Joe, Frank—they might all cheer for net bogeys, but I never met a Chandler who couldn’t play (I’ve met only one, but he can). Bradley—he probably stripes it, and Alan is a stick; he takes money off Al every time out. Jimbo and Jimmy mash it, while Jim plays in cargo shorts. And then there was Garth. Garth golfed his ball. Garth was a country-club rat who played on scholarship at a Christian college down South and had a cushy sales gig at his dad’s insurance outfit waiting for him, where his job would be to dazzle clients on the golf course and sip transfusions full-time.

I had never actually met a Garth, not until the winter before I left for Scotland and learned that, just as I couldn’t judge the Scots’ playing abilities by swings that sometimes looked like an angry janitor mopping the cafeteria, I shouldn’t judge a player by their moniker. This Garth was not a born linksman. He had the name, the carefully parted hair of a corporate hustler, the starched Brooks Brothers shirts, and the Ivy League education. But he was also raised in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in that red center of my home state where schools closed for the opening of deer season and a trip to Sheetz was reason enough to iron the Dale Earnhardt T-shirt. He was thirty-four but had taken up golf only the previous year after marrying into a golf-mad, mainline Philadelphia family, and was now scrambling to catch up to their handicaps and win himself a spot in the Thanksgiving foursome.

When I threw out a Facebook invitation to friends to join me for a few rounds in Scotland, I was shocked when Garth came back as one of the instant commits. His local handicap was 38.4, and he had just recently achieved his goal of making his posted scores actually count, shaving a few strokes off the default max of 40. We met over coffee to discuss the trip at hand. I needed to make sure Garth knew what he was signing up for in links golf, in wooly-hat golf, in buying-more-balls-at-the-turn golf. And he was in, without a breath of hesitation. He had a line on a gross of golf balls through DrMulligans.com and was eager for the test, as long as, he explained, I didn’t mind playing with a beginner.

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