ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | Early Friday evening, about the time a second round of cocktails was being poured in many spots, a man and his piano sat in the middle of Grannie Clark’s Wynd, the road that bisects the first and 18th fairways at the Old Course, the heart of golf’s universe.
Under a sky studded with blue-gray clouds and with a fresh breeze coming off the West Sands Beach nearby, the piano player had his back to the familiar old stone R&A clubhouse and he faced the Swilcan Bridge where every great player and tens of thousands of tourists have had their moments, taking the most memorable steps in the game.
If you listened closely, between the seagulls’ squawks and the wind in your ears, there was the sound of the theme from the movie “Chariots of Fire,” portions of which were filmed on the adjacent beach, being played for the pure joy of the moment.
There were no golfers on the Old Course, just a random worker or two adding a finishing touch here and there while dozens of people – not Open Championship competitors – walked the first and 18th holes. A golden retriever, overcome by the moment, dropped to his back and rolled around the final fairway as happy as if he’d discovered a bag of treats on Christmas morning.
Why a piano player on the Old Course?
As the lettering on the massive grandstands speckled across the most precious bit of linksland in the world reads, “150 – Everything Has Led To This.”
That’s why.
There is no bigger event in golf than the Open Championship at the Old Course, and this one, delayed by COVID and celebrating the event’s sesquicentennial, feels as if it’s been building longer than the seven years since Zach Johnson won the last Open played here.
This week isn’t about the LIV Golf schism. If the world-ranking committee makes any decisions about the new group’s points earning potential during its midweek meeting, there will be no announcement now.
The R&A said plenty when it did not invite two-time Open champion Greg Norman to participate in the past-champions’ event Monday afternoon. Consider its point made.
Talk to the locals and they will tell you that this Open Championship feels different because of all that’s happened in the world since the last one. There was no golf here for a time, and it was like the North Pole without Santa.
As the piano man played in the pre-Open weekend, it was like a Sunday when the Old Course is closed for golf but open as a public park, only now it is festooned with hospitality chalets and massive grandstands bearing the Claret Jug logo the size of a house. Nearly 300,000 people are expected to be on-site this week, watching Woods and McIlroy, Morikawa and Rahm, Scheffler and Spieth.
Early Friday evening, almost everyone was someplace else, awash in the anticipation. There were a few open seats in the bar at the Dunvegan Hotel where beers are poured in a spot almost as precious to the town as the Old Course itself. It’s where the language of golf is spoken, where messages are written on the chalkboard outside and where virtually every famous figure in the game has his or her photo on a wall, a ceiling or someplace else.
That’s why Justin Thomas stopped by to show it to his fiancée, Jillian Wisniewski, who is making her first visit to St. Andrews.
With no one on the Old Course – it hosts up to 275 rounds a day during busy summer days – its centuries-old brilliance lay there like the Mona Lisa outside its protective case. The Old Course isn’t particularly eye-catching, but it is endlessly enchanting, its bunkers and slopes and double greens the product of a natural genius.
Go there for the first time without someone who has played the Old Course before and by the second tee you might ask where you’re going. There are no trees to define it, just a rhythmic run in one direction, a collection of criss-crossing holes at the far end and then a magnificent march back toward the town and its buildings, which frame the finish like the ocean frames a beach.
The residue of winter has been scrubbed off the stone walls around town, baskets of flowers bloom in windows and gardens and almost every conversation starts or ends with the Open Championship.
By Sunday evening, the town had come alive, the quiet downturn induced by the Old Course being closed in advance of the Open replaced by the building buzz about what’s to come.
The narrow streets have been made toothpick-thin by metal barriers along the sidewalks, there is a village on the practice range with hundreds of tents where spectators can spend their nights between rounds and the only things more precious than Open tickets are dinner reservations and available hotel rooms.
For a time late Friday, as Scotland’s extended twilight lingered and the breeze blew across the flat land as it has for the nearly 500 years golf has been played here, there was an expectant peace in the air.
In the 18th fairway, where someone will make the winner’s walk on Sunday, the piano man played a few notes that drifted away on the wind.
Everything, the messaging says, has led to this.
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