ST. ANDREWS, SCOTLAND | On Friday 19 September, David Scott, the general manager of Dumbarnie Links and the current captain of the Professional Golfers’ Association, has a daunting task on his hands. As the sixth honorary professional in the history of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, he must tee up the ball for the incoming captain, the 4-handicap His Honour Judge Dennis Watson. The latter hails from the realm of criminal justice.
It might sound like one more oddball tradition in golf’s history, only this is an occasion which means everything to the people of St Andrews other, perhaps, than those rascals who saw fit to break the club which Old Tom Morris was holding in his statue on the mound.
As Ian Pattinson, the outgoing captain, leads Judge Watson and Scott on the ceremonial walk to the first tee at 8 a.m. precisely, the pair will endeavour to look composed in front of the 500 or maybe more members and townsfolk who will have been gathering since 7 o’clock. To capture the mood, James K. Robertson, in his book “St Andrews Home of Golf,” wrote the following: “No matter how composed he may appear, and no matter how experienced a golfer he might be, the Captain-elect is tense and anxious.” Small wonder that this is the case, for it is only as the ball takes flight – always assuming it does – that the captain-in-waiting becomes captain.
“My job,” said Scott, “is to make the judge’s dreams come true. I want him to give a good account of himself – and to do that I’ll need to keep him as calm as possible.”
He plans to take the judge down to the range to get him loosened up and, if required, to give him “a wee dram.”
Scott qualified as a PGA professional in 1985. Four years later, he was the runner-up to Brian Barnes in the British Club Professionals Championship at Prince’s Golf Club before partnering him in the PGA Cup on Kiawah Island the following year.
Already, he has been told of an occasion – maybe apocryphal – of one of his forebears whose size no longer made for easy bending down and standing up. Barely had he gone through the process of teeing up the ball on one occasion than the captain-in-waiting apologised heartily and asked if he would mind starting all over again. He preferred a higher tee.
In his world of criminal justice, we can rest assured that Judge Watson will have known worse than a man inserting a tee incorrectly. Scott, however, is hell bent on getting it 100 percent right.
At this point in our conversation, he picked up the silver knife which was lying on his office desk – a knife which has played a major part in his golfing story.
Born and brought up in St Andrews, he and his friends would walk past the R&A clubhouse – a holy of holies as far as they were concerned – on their daily visit to the Jubilee Course.
There was a children’s holiday club and, every year, the leading octet in the 15-year-old age bracket would be invited to play eight members of the R&A.
Each of the youngsters was given a silver knife – for letter-opening rather than anything more sinister – and, in Scott’s case, he could not have been more gleeful had he been heading for home with the Claret Jug.
Going on from there, he was the director of golf at Kingsbarns before becoming the manager of the Duke’s Course, and then director of operations at the Old Course Hotel. After concentrating on the golf side of things, Herb Kohler, the owner, asked if he would take over the running of the resort until they found a new manager. You can only assume that Scott ran that 144-bedroom establishment rather well in that it was two and a half years before a new manager appeared on the scene. After a total of 11 years, Scott accepted the new role at Dumbarnie Links.
As captain of the PGA, he must attend 15 PGA tournaments in his year of office while, as the R&A’s honorary professional he will be expected to give advice on the R&A’s golf shops and join in events such as the chairman versus vice chairman’s annual “Pinehurst Foursomes.”
He has full member privilege but without being a member, and is currently studying the history of the club in order to do as others in showing visiting luminaries round the clubhouse and answering their questions.
Andrew Kirkcaldy, who started out as a caddie and went on to have three second-place finishes in the Open before becoming the first of the club’s honorary professionals in 1910, had an answer for everything. Indeed, when one of the members asked if he felt swearing should be banned among the caddying corps, Andrew, who was on occasion a guilty party himself, replied with a heartfelt, “It damned well should.”
In which connection, a good 40 or so caddies will be out in force on 19 September and whichever one of them is first to grab the incoming captain’s ball after it lands will be the recipient of a gold sovereign.
When, in 1922, the Duke of Windsor was the captain-elect, the caddies had discussed at length where they should stand if they were to have any chance of winning that sovereign.
Apparently they ended up standing “disloyally near” to the tee.
Where, you wonder, will they be stationed for Judge Watson?
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: David Scott is the sixth honorary professional of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
THE R&A