The Course

“O’ a’ the links where I hae golfed frae Ayr to Aberdeen,

On Prestwick or Carnoustie and mony mair I ween,

What tho’ the bests are rough and bunkers yawn aroun’,

I dearly lo’e the breezy links, the breezy links o’ Troon.” – Gilmour

Tam Arte Quam Marte – as much by skill as by strength – is the Latin motto of Royal Troon Golf Club. 

Its nine Open champions have had to outwit every bit as much as overpower this vintage Ayrshire links that dates back to the 19th century.

“As a local member, and someone who knows the course better than most, I am often asked how I rate Royal Troon alongside the other classic Scottish links,” said Colin Montgomerie, one of Royal Troon’s favourite sons. He grew up in the town while his father, James, was the club secretary.

“I tend to respond by suggesting that it is right up there alongside Carnoustie as the toughest links course in the country.

“However, it would be wrong to suggest that Royal Troon is nothing more than a brute because, as successive generations of Open competitors have found, you need finesse and touch s well as strength to play it well,” said Montgomerie.

According to The Breezy Links o’Troon, the club’s official history, there is some evidence of golf being played here from as early as 1870. Certainly, a meeting was held in 1878 proposing the formation of a golf club. 

Charles Hunter, keeper of the green at nearby Prestwick, offered professional guidance on how to convert the unprepossessing scrubland, scattered with gorse (or whin) bushes into a course of five or six holes. 

By 1883, six holes had become 12 and then 18. According to the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News in 1885: “The new course at Troon is one which, when there has been a little more trampling, will prove one of the best in Scotland.”

By 1900, courtesy of the 1883 Open champion and the club’s new professional, Willie Fernie, the course had come to look at least something like what we see today. 

It was modified by another Open champion, the five-time winner James Braid, after the First World War.

Most recently, Mackenzie Ebert advised on some modest changes ahead of the 2016 Open Championship that included the restoration of sand scrapes and a blowhole between the 10th tee and fairway that restores the drama of this blind drive.

The Old course now measures 7,208 yards off the championship tees with a par of 71. It’s a good thousand yards shorter off the regular tees, thankfully. 

Royal Troon is commonly described as a ‘nine hole out and nine hole in’ style of links but it is perhaps more accurately thought of as one where the first six holes go out, then the middle six play in ever-changing directions and finally the last six head back towards the handsome and famous stone clubhouse.

The newly rebuilt tee at the 1st, is tight to the beach and it makes for a classically links-like start to the round. Indeed, the Irish Sea, complete with views of the Isle of Arran and Ailsa Craig that are more usually associated with Trump Turnberry some 20 miles down the coast, is to the golfer’s right for the opening six holes, which often play downwind. 

“As for the middle six, ah, they are another matter altogether,” writes James W Finegan in Where Golf is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland. “Here we find originality, character, drama. In a couple of instances, they are unnerving simply to look at. But even more to the point they are a delight to play.”

This stretch of holes includes the world-famous Postage Stamp, Royal Troon’s 8th. Just 123 yards from a raised tee, the Postage Stamp is as cute as they come. In an age when Championship par threes are often twice the length, it is a reminder that subtlety of design is more effective an antidote to modern equipment than building a new tee to make a hole 30 yards longer.

Standing over what should be a simple short-iron shot, only your technique, nerve and judgment can save you from golfing disaster. The tiny green is flanked by bunkers whose only function is to ruin your scorecard. 

“Some of the hardest holes are around the turn,” said Jan Chandler, one of Royal Troon’s past secretaries. “There are only four blind drives and they come consecutively at the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th.

“My own favourite is the 7th, where the fairway seems so inviting but the green is difficult to find.”

From the 10th tee, at the very furthest point from the clubhouse, the challenge is formidable. In front stands a hill of gorse and wild rough. Beyond and as yet unseen tumbles a fairway, bisecting the hillocks and eventually leading to a raised green.

If the vista from the 8th tee doesn’t intimidate you, then try the 11th, which runs parallel to the railway tracks with gorse waiting for the golfer who over-compensates and hits to the left.

It is one of the hardest par 4s on the Open rota and famously cost a young Tiger Woods a quadruple-bogey eight in the second round of the 1997 championship.

These holes are part of a run of six par fours only interrupted by the bunker-surrounded short 14th.

The shortest par 4 on the back nine is the 12th at 431 yards. The inward half is longer on the card, has a lower par (35 to the front nine’s 36) and most of the holes play into the prevailing wind.

It culminates in Royal Troon’s 5-3-4 finish that collectively calls for just about every shot in the bag. A ditch crosses the fairway at the long 16th on driving distance, and the wind usually dictates whether or not it can be attacked from the tee. If not, reaching the green in two is practically impossible.

The final short hole features a raised green that falls away on three sides. That makes saving par after missing the green particularly awkward. Just ask Greg Norman and Ernie Els, who bogeyed it during Open play-offs in which they were expected to prevail.

The last hole measures 453 yards but if it plays downwind, as it sometimes does, the biggest problem can be the clubhouse and out-of-bounds path that sit tight to the back of the green.

“The 17th is overlooked as a terrific long par 3,” wrote Tom Doak in his Confidential Guide to Golf Courses. “And the Postage Stamp 8th with its ever-narrowing shelf green is even more fearsome than you imagine it to be.”

Only one Briton has ever won an Open at Royal Troon – and that was Arthur Havers almost a century ago in 1923. The last six champions prior to 2016 were all Americans – Arnold Palmer, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Watson, Mark Calcavecchia, Justin Leonard and Todd Hamilton all returned Stateside with the Claret Jug.

A seventh American, Phil Mickelson, was thwarted in 2016 by Sweden’s Henrik Stenson in what was an unforgettable final round.

What they illustrated, as we approach 150 years of golf being played over the Old Course at Royal Troon, is that Royal Troon remains a supreme test of shotmaking, nerve, power and skill. Or Tam Arte Quam Marte, as the Romans might have put it