Dignified, Elegant, a Bit of Hell, Too: That’s St. Andrews : The 125th British Open Starts Thursday at the Old Course on Scotland’s North Sea, Site of the Most Famous 18 Holes in Golf

The wind may be blowing off the North Sea this week for the British Open at the Old Course, the most famous 18 golf holes in the world.

Or it may be still.

Chances are, it’s going to be as hot as shortbread and as dry as the sand in Hell Bunker.

Or it’s going to be as wet as a bottle of Scotch whiskey.

Whatever it may be, it’s golf as it is played nowhere else, an anything-but-routine remembrance of how the game was played, say, 400 years ago, or much the same way the legendary Young Tom Morris found it when he won here in 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1872.

There are pot bunkers hidden from view. There are other, larger bunkers, roughly the size of Glasgow.

There are rumpled fairways and prickly, spiny vegetation, little mounds and hollows and greens on plateaus defended by more bunkers and swales deeper than Loch Lomond.

If someone figured out how to irrigate the moon and put a golf course on it, it would look sort of like St. Andrews.

But, somehow, sooner or later, everyone falls in love with St. Andrews, where the 125th British Open will be played beginning Thursday, the 25th time the Open Championship has been staged at St. Andrews.

Tony Lema, who won the 1964 British Open at St. Andrews, once was asked what he thought of the Old Course.

“It’s like going to Scotland to visit your sick grandmother,” Lema said. “She’s old and she’s crotchety and she’s eccentric. But look real close and, my, isn’t she dignified and elegant.”

The first record of golf being played at St. Andrews dates to 1552. As for the town itself, its beginnings are as legendary as the golf course.

St. Andrews is supposed to have begun in the Fourth Century when St. Rule, whose mission was to establish a religious shrine, was shipwrecked off the Fife Coast, according to legend.

Relics of the apostle St. Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, were on board. Rule established a religious community and shrine at the site of the shipwreck and by the Eighth Century, pilgrims were visiting.

A Gothic cathedral later was built on the site of the shrine above the harbor, where the land drops to the sea. In the middle ages, St. Andrews was the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, but supporters of John Knox left the cathedral in ruin during the Reformation in 1559.

It’s fairly well accepted that golf was born at St. Andrews, despite the best efforts of three Scottish kings who tried to discourage the sport, mainly because they felt their subjects were spending too much time golfing when they should have been practicing archery in the interest of national defense.

There are 450 courses in Scotland, but none more famous than the Old Course. Six other Scottish courses that have played host to the British Open are within a two-hour drive of St. Andrews.

Carnoustie, Musselburgh, Muirfield, Prestwick, Turnberry and Troon have earned their places in golf lore, but they cannot match the Old Course.

The authorized printed guide reserves for the Old Course the kind of reverent description that might be applied to, say, a Turner landscape.

The course “was modeled by the winds of God that formed the dunes into random and eccentrically complex shapes, indifferent then, as now, to the vanities of man.”

Clearly, it’s more than a golf course. Arnold Palmer said that walking into the clubhouse at St. Andrews is like ‘being admitted to the Hall of the gods.”

Palmer might have been thinking something different in 1978 on the 17th hole, the infamous Road Hole, when he he drove out of bounds. It’s not an easy drive because the ball has to take a line over the Old Course Hotel grounds or the approach to the green is harder than a persimmon driver.

If the drive is too far left, the approach to the green is narrow. Plus the Scholars and Progressing bunkers are waiting.

What’s more, the pin on 17 is between the Road bunker and a road and there’s nothing to stop an overhit sand shot from hitting the road and taking off like a runaway lorry.

The 18th green is tucked in the corner of two narrow streets on the edge of town. All that separates the green from the town is a short, white fence.

Ernie Els said he thought he was ready for St. Andrews, but he wasn’t. He was overwhelmed when he saw it for the first time in October.

“Nothing really prepares you,” he said. “I guess it’s a cathedral.”

Over the years and decades, many players have found it to be something else.

When Sam Snead first saw St. Andrews from the window of an airplane in 1946, he said to the pilot, “Say, fella, there’s an abandoned golf course down there.”

Actually, it just sort of looks that way.

Take the fairway shared by the first and 18th greens. It is more like a polo field with nothing really there except the Swilcan Burn and a tiny stone bridge. Seven holes share greens with each other, which makes two-putting from 100 feet a real thrill.

Starting with the third hole, St. Andrews looks like an unmade bed upon which somebody has emptied his pockets after a day at the beach.

Some of the bunkers are vast caverns, carved out by sheep who were searching for shelter from the wind, others by locals digging for seashells.

Even the bunkers at St. Andrews are famous. They are known by their names, such as Grave, Hell, Coffin.

You sort of get the idea these aren’t the places you want to be.

Gene Sarazen made his visit to Hell a memorable occasion in 1933.

Defending his championship, Sarazen hit his second shot into the 28-yard-long bunker on the 567-yard 14th. He needed three shots to get out and wound up with a triple-bogey eight.

He finished one shot out of a playoff.

“That was tragic,” Sarazen said. “Caddies still point out that bunker and say, ‘That’s where Sarazen took an eight.’ I really threw that one away.”

But 62 years later, Sarazan isn’t holding a grudge against Hell Bunker.

“I’m not mad at it anymore,” he said. “When you walk past that Hell Bunker, take a look. You might see my ghost inside.”

As it turns out, Sarazen’s experience was hardly unique. Palmer might attest that the 461-yard par-four 17th, the Road Hole, may be the hardest in golf. It is a dogleg right around the Old Course Hotel to a green set against a walking path, a road and a stone wall.

As Tommy Nakajima found out, the very nasty Road Bunker is there, too.

In 1978, Nakajima took a quintuple-bogey nine after landing in the Road Bunker. He needed four shots to get out. Caddies pounced quickly on his misfortune, giving the bunker another nickname, “The sands of Nakajima.”

What did in Doug Sanders at St. Andrews wasn’t a bunker or heather and gorse or hills or anything like that. It was a green.

It was the 18th green, to be exact. The fairway and the front portion of the 18th form one of the most intimidating and frightening swales in golf. It is called the Valley of Sin.

And everybody knows what the wages of sin are. Sanders’ chances for the 1970 British Open died there.

The talented Sanders was known more for his colorful wardrobe and spirited lifestyle than his golf, but he had a one-shot lead as he came to the last hole 25 years ago.

After driving a few yards short of the swale, Sanders chose not to hit a bump-and-run, but instead lofted his ball over the trouble spot. The ball went 30 feet past the flag.

Sanders missed a three-foot putt for par, wound up three-putting the hole for a bogey and fell into a tie with Jack Nicklaus, who won a playoff the next day.

Playing the Old Course can drive you crazy, all right. Even Bobby Jones lost his cool at St. Andrews. It happened in 1921 when Jones, a 19-year-old prodigy, shot 46 on the front nine of the third day and started the turn with a double-bogey six on the 10th.

When he hit into the Hill Bunker to the left of the green on the par-three 11th, he put his ball in his pocket and threw his scorecard into the Eden River.

Jones also vowed never to return to St. Andrews but he was back in 1927 and won the Open Championship. He also won the British Amateur at St. Andrews in 1930.

When Jones was honored by St. Andrews in 1958, his attitude had changed drastically.

“You have to study the Old Course,” Jones said. “And the more you study it, the more you learn. Of course, the more you learn, the more you have to study it.

“If I could take everything out of my life except my experience at St. Andrews, I would still have enjoyed a rich and full life.”

Snead experienced a similar change of heart after his airborne critique of St. Andrews. Golf at St. Andrews is almost a religious experience, he said.

“The only place in Britain that’s holier is Westminster Abbey,” Snead said.

Former President Bush is a member of the Royal and Ancient at St. Andrews. So are Neil Armstrong and Alistair Cooke. Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player are honorary members.

Two of the most famous players at St. Andrews were Tom Morris and his son Tom, known as Old Tom and Young Tom. Each won four championships. Their graves are in the cathedral churchyard at St. Andrews.

Old Tom played in the Open from 1861 until 1896, when he was 75. He was greenskeeper at St. Andrews for 40 years, a club maker and course designer.

Old Tom designed Prestwick, where he was greenskeeper for 14 years and where Young Tom was born. As a player, Old Tom was known for his accuracy from tee to green and for missing short putts.

Legend has it that a letter was once addressed, “To The Misser of Short Putts, Prestwick.” The letter was delivered to Old Tom.

The Morrises are a rich part of St. Andrews’ lore, but so is Jock Anderson, a bartender and self-styled entrepreneur.

About 40 years ago, Anderson worked at the Jigger Inn, which stands besides the 17th tee.

According to legend, Anderson sold to gullible American tourists the pub’s stools and tables, all engraved: “Tom Morris Drank Here. 26th June, 1859.”

Cheers. Now, which way is that wind blowing today?