DUNDONALD, SCOTLAND | Jin Young Ko wiped her hands on the fringe beside the practice putting green at Dundonald Links, home of last week’s Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open. By way of a pause in what was a three-hour putting session, the world No. 1 had been tucking into what was her third deliciously high-calorie Scottish sausage roll of the week. So taken was she with this local speciality that you wondered if it had influenced her sudden thought of retiring to Scotland when her golfing days are done.
The “Scottish pies,” as the sausage rolls were being called, featured on many a player’s list of what makes golf in Scotland so special. The combination of fine links and unpredictable weather also loomed large, as did the country’s proud golfing history and its people.
Starting with the pies, the women and their caddies discovered them in The Bothy, the halfway hut which just happened to be adjacent to the new clubhouse. The Bothy’s manager struggled to believe how quickly his homemade products were being wolfed. “If it’s not the sausage rolls, it’s the black-pudding steak pies,” he said with a chuckle.
Georgia Hall, who won the 2018 Women’s Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, picked out the Scottish weather which, according to Alan Grant from Visit Scotland, appeals to many a visiting golfing connoisseur above playing in some continental holiday hot spot.
“You never know what you’re going to get when you come up to Scotland,” said Hall, an Englishwoman who, incidentally, would have been doing her darnedest to avoid the pies as a one-time adherent of Gary Player’s dietary recommendations. “I wouldn’t wish for rain, but I would always want a 10 to 15 mph wind, because windy conditions, to me, are what links golf is all about. It’s a shame when it doesn’t blow.”
Denmark’s Emily Kristine Pedersen said much the same. Having likened Scottish summers to a Spanish winter, she said a true links asked all the right questions of her game.
“A Scottish links is such a challenge,” she said. “It’s all about patience and being creative.”
Her only fear was that her 83-year-old grandmother, who had come to watch her for a first time, could be in trouble if the weather turned nasty: “If the wind really gets up, she could blow away!”
Australia’s Minjee Lee, the reigning U.S. Open champion, was another competitor to see patience as the key to Scottish golf. “It’s definitely a test of patience if it blows or if it’s raining, or both. It could be a perfectly horrible day, but you’ve still got to play…”
California’s Ryann O’Toole, who won last year’s Scottish Open at Dumbarnie Links, is one of the LPGA Tour’s great history buffs, with St Andrews as her favourite place on earth.
“I tell anybody that doesn't really play golf, ‘You go to Aspen (Colorado), it's all about skiing and snowboarding and being in the mountains. You go to St Andrews, and it's all golf and it's just like you are in the ‘home of golf’ and it consumes you.”
Nothing had made her prouder than being last year’s Scottish Open champion. All she wanted was to win it again, and to follow up with a good performance in this week’s AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield, where Robin Dow, the club’s historian, can be guaranteed her full attention.
Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist, winner of last year’s AIG Women’s Open at Carnoustie, was as well-placed as anyone to comment on what it is that sets golfing Scotland apart.
First, there was her Scottish husband, Kevin McAlpine, whom she will marry for a second time next week as they have the full-scale ceremony that they were unable to hold before. Next came a humorous mention of how she had picked up “all the bad words in the Scottish language” from Kevin and her Scottish caddie. Going on from there, she marvelled at the quality of Scotland’s courses, the simplicity of things in general, and fish and chips. “So now I can’t eat fish and chips anywhere but here,” she said.
In the opinion of Gemma Dryburgh, a homegrown Scot and a proud owner of an LPGA players’ card, it is “the warmth of the people” that adds that extra something to her homeland.
Meanwhile, rumours of LIV Golf for the women were stirring around Dundonald without anything in the way of help from the wind. O’Toole, for one, said it was madness for people not to be talking about it. She added that she welcomed the news that Mollie Marcoux Samaan, wrapping up her first year as LPGA commissioner, would listen to what the LIV people had to say, while she suspected that the hierarchy on the PGA Tour should have gone down the same less-hostile route.
The impression one had at Dundonald was that the women are at much the same point as the men were at the start of the year. Indeed, those who were being quizzed about it followed the lead of their opposite numbers in saying that it made no sense to react to what was, at the moment, purely speculation.
Top: Scottish husband and caddie keep Anna Nordqvist fluent in all the choice local lingo and fish and chips.
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