Golf Art of Scotland

Golf as we know it grew up on the east coast of Scotland, on the strips of sandy ground between the towns and the sea. The Scots call this land links: the sand dunes, hollows and grassland left behind as the sea retreated, too poor for farming and too uneven for building, and used for centuries as common ground. The game fit the land rather than the other way around, and that is still why Scottish golf looks the way it does.

On a links the ground drains fast and plays firm, so the ball runs a long way after it lands. The grasses are fine fescues and bents, kept short by wind, salt and sheep long before mowers. Trees are rare. Many bunkers are thought to have begun as hollows where sheep sheltered from the wind and the sand blew out, which helps explain why so many are small, deep and unexpectedly placed. The weather supplies the rest: the same hole can call for a wedge one day and a long iron the next.

The courses in Linda Hartough's collection trace that history. The Old Course at St Andrews is the ancestral links, worn into shape over centuries rather than designed, and the one against which the others are measured. Muirfield, home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers and its rules of 1744, and Carnoustie, the severest of the championship links, lie on the east coast. Royal Troon and Turnberry face west across the Firth of Clyde toward Arran and the granite dome of Ailsa Craig. Royal Dornoch, far north in the Highlands, is where Donald Ross learned the game before carrying its raised, crowned greens to America.

Five of these six courses have hosted The Open Championship, which has been played only on links since it began at Prestwick in 1860. The collection includes the Road Hole and Swilcan Bridge at St Andrews, the Postage Stamp at Troon, and the coastal holes at Turnberry, among others.