IN THE BEGINNING
I have been a golfer since the age of 16. As I started to write the print version of this book, I was a mere one month short of my 66th birthday. I have always been very serious about sports; that is just my nature and interest. I was always a pretty decent athlete but somewhat held back by a lack of size and a lifetime of asthma. My Dad was always interested in sports, as a competitor, and fan, so I was schooled early in the lore of the game as well as the mechanics. I remember the stories I would hear from older people, about the hazards associated with golf in Scotland. The stories about the pot bunkers, the gorse, the wind, the rain, and all the other differences from the American game, made an early impression on my mind. But it always remained in the abstract. That was there, this is here, and I was busy trying to learn the game.
In 1984, I was 41 years old and living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and golf had become my primary source of recreation. That summer, I bought my first Video Cassette Recorder (VCR). One of the first things I recorded was the ’84 British Open, which was played at St. Andrews. It was the year that Seve beat Tom Watson, down the stretch. I still have that tape and watched it several times while preparing for my trip. I had always watched golf on television, especially the Majors, but had never had the luxury of revisiting them via video tape. That year I started a tradition, in which I still continue today, of recording the Majors and re-watching them when nothing else was on. While re-watching the Open, I became fascinated by the course at St. Andrews with all its humps and bumps and bounces of links golf. I thought it was amazing how different it was from our groomed and watered golf courses. It looked like a great challenge to keep the ball under the wind and play the game close to the ground.
Over the Ocean and to the Links: A Golfer’s Journey Description:
Since I started playing golf, I had long had the interest in making the trip, to the home of golf. However, I had been put off by the stories of trips arranged through tour groups, not to mention the expense. I have always been the type of person to do things my own way and not be excessively bound by other people’s arrangements.
On top of that, I really didn’t have a lot of other golfing buddies that I could collaborate with. So….what was I supposed to do? Here is my story.
