Echos from St. Andrews
- Andy May
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
St. Andrew Old Course 2024
“After the year I’ve had, I don’t think I deserve another one.”
That was the thought running through my head as I turned the corner onto Golf Place in St Andrews, Scotland
My wife and I had spent the past two weeks wandering through Scotland in a tiny VW Class B motorhome, chasing golf courses along the coast like pilgrims searching for something sacred. Somewhere along the way, the trip had become less about golf and more about searching for a feeling—a place where I felt, for reasons I couldn’t explain, that I belonged.
And then there it was.
The Old Course.
Even seeing the 18th green through the windshield felt surreal. I parked, walked across the lot, and stood against the green lattice fence that separates visitors from the course itself. For a brief moment, I honestly considered hopping over, stealing someone’s putter, and taking a few swings just to know what it felt like.
Standing there brought an unexpected calm.
Sam Snead once called it the holiest place in golf, second only to Westminster Abbey. Tom Watson described it as having a “strange ambiguousness.” Both somehow felt accurate. Before you ever hit a shot there, you can already sense that something about the place matters.
Maybe this is what people feel standing inside places like the Vatican—an awareness that history has soaked into the ground beneath you.
The winds moved across the dunes and hollows exactly as they must have hundreds of years ago, when golfers in wool coats pushed featheries down these same fairways. The course still feels ancient in the best possible way—untamed, accidental, eternal.
And there, looming over the 18th green, stood the clubhouse of the The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, casting long shadows across the home hole as the afternoon light drifted west.
I was there for one reason:
The Daily Singles Lottery.
For golfers like me, it’s the dream. The chance to play the course from which every other famous course somehow traces its lineage. It sounds dramatic saying it out loud, but it truly felt like stepping into another chapter of life—if I could somehow get on.
Inside the shop, the attendant asked where I’d be staying if my name was called.
I simply pointed toward the parking lot.
Out there sat our little motorhome—our home for the past two weeks—packed floor to ceiling with tea, Tesco meals, snacks, rain gear, and enough beer to survive a Scottish monsoon.
After signing up, I wandered up the street toward the Dunvegan Hotel for a Guinness and what I assumed would be a very long wait.
That’s when something strange happened.
On the walk uphill, I passed a man carrying his clubs toward the first tee. Nothing unusual there—at St. Andrews, golfers seem to emerge from every direction.
But his golf bag caught my eye.
The logo looked familiar.
Very familiar.
Then it hit me.
It was the logo for Windyke Country Club in Memphis, Tennessee—a course my grandfather had helped design decades earlier with a business partner. The club so named for founder Earl Dykema. The same club where my father and his siblings had grown up in the caddie house near the entrance.
I stopped him immediately.
“Where’s that bag from?”
The man looked surprised and replied that he was a member at Windyke, part of a group visiting Scotland to play the Old Course.
I told him who I was and explained my family connection.
Within seconds, he turned around and said, “Come with me.”
My wife and I walked back down the hill where he introduced me to the head professional—who somehow recognized me from a visit years earlier.
Three thousand miles from home, standing beside the Old Course, I had randomly crossed paths with people tied directly to my grandfather’s life.
At that moment, something clicked.
It felt less like coincidence and more like a message.
Like my grandfather was somehow reaching across time to say: You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
From then on, I stopped wondering if I would play.
The universe had already decided.
It was only a matter of when.
Several nervous pints and a walk around St Andrews Castle later, my phone rang.
I had a tee time.
Late in the afternoon, but enough daylight to finish.
The joy that hit me in that moment was overwhelming—probably second only to my wedding day, and hopefully my wife never reads that sentence.
I gathered my things as quickly as I could and hurried to the course. One bucket on the range later, I stood on the first tee, nervous beyond belief.
There was an audience, of course.
There always is at St. Andrews.
But this felt bigger than nerves. Bigger than golf. It felt like standing at the entrance to your own personal Shangri-La.
My playing partners were another father-and-son pair—which, oddly enough, seems to happen to me often—and a small Thai gentleman in town on business who had entered the ballot on a dare and somehow won.
He was absolutely glowing with excitement.
Not nervous. Not intimidated.
Just pure joy.
A few months earlier, the Presidents Cup had wrapped up, so naturally we invented a ridiculous little match between the American representative—me—and the Asian representative—him. The prize: a drink after the round and imaginary international glory.
The first hole, despite all its history, is surprisingly forgettable. Straight downwind and deceptively simple.
I promptly duffed a chip straight into the Swilcan Burn.
Thankfully, the course provides retrieval poles specifically designed for idiots like me, which tells you how often this apparently happens.
The next several holes blurred together.
My concentration narrowed to two things:
Keep the ball low. Beat my Thai opponent.
I managed both reasonably well.
The Old Course is unlike anywhere else because disaster never looks dramatic until it’s too late. The pot bunkers appear harmless from a distance, then swallow golf balls—and souls—whole. Some were positioned centuries ago when the course was actually played in reverse, something they still occasionally do for special events.
Every hole felt like a slow build toward 17 and 18.
The Road Hole.
The Home Hole.
Golf’s cathedral ending.
Seventeen demands a shot around the famous railway shed—a terrifying line over a building covered in decades of ball marks from failed attempts.
I somehow pulled off a nice fade around the corner and followed it with a 6-iron onto the green.
The applause came from the patio of The Jigger Inn along the fairway.
Several patrons clapped and cheered.
Naturally, I bowed.
It felt required.
I two-putted for par, which remains one of the proudest accomplishments of my golfing life considering how poorly I’d played most of the day.
And then came 18.
The Home Hole.
The most famous closing hole in golf.
This was where Bobby Jones was carried off on the shoulders of the townspeople. Where legends finished careers, won championships, and became immortal.
After squeezing a fade down the fairway, my wife and I stopped on the Swilcan Bridge.
The bridge is older than most countries.
Golfers like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer had stood there saying goodbye to championship golf. And now we stood there too—not as champions, but as two people fully aware that this might be the only time we’d ever cross it together.
That moment carried everything with it.
My grandfather. The chance encounter with Windyke members. Winning the ballot. My wife beside me through all of it.
We stood quietly, small drams of whiskey in our pockets and emotion somewhere just beneath the surface.
After crossing, I hit one final wedge safely past the infamous Valley of Sin and onto the green.
Two putts later, it was over.
I shook hands with my playing partners, collected my imaginary Presidents Cup victory, and realized something important:
There was my golf life before St. Andrews.
And there was everything after it.
After the round, my wife and I limped into the Jigger Inn and joined the same crowd that had cheered us hours earlier. Around us, more golfers finished their own once-in-a-lifetime moments as the sun disappeared over the links.
The trip wasn’t over.
But deep down, I knew I had already found what I came there for.
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