Carnoustie Golf Links - Scotland

Carnoustie is a small and rather remote village that lies on the other side of the Firth of Forth from St. Andrews, but the 1999 British Open left no doubt that is the fiercest and most unrelenting of all the championship courses of Great Britain. Before 1999, Carnoustie was best known as the site of Ben Hogan's historic triumph at the British Open in 1953, the year the "wee ice mon" won all three of the majors he entered. Even in ordinary circumstances, Carnoustie is a tough track, but with the rough allowed to grow like the giant's beanstalk and the fairways reduced to narrow corridors, the pros were left crying for mercy. No golfer can forget Jean Van de Velde's agonizing finish on the 18th hole that year. The Frenchman's pitch from the tall rough found Barry Burn on his way to a triple­bogey seven, sending him to a three-way playoff that ended with Paul Lawrie as the last man standing. As Patric Dickinson wrote so presciently of Carnoustie back in 1950: "The denouement is like the climax of an Elizabethan drama: daggers are out by the 16th, a poisoned-cup filled from the Burn and drunk deeply at the 17th;and the eighteenth green is littered with dead bodies which Fortinbras (fresh from a 72 at St. Andrews) arrives to clear up and cart off, on trolleys... but is it really a grand tragedy finish; or is it grand guignol? Or a bit of both?"

Royal Aberdeen Golf Club - Scotland

Royal Aberdeen is not one of the better known, but it is one of the best links in Scotland. The Society of Golfers of Aberdeen was founded in 1780, making it the sixth-oldest golf club in the world, and moved to its present home at Balgownie, a mile north of the city across the River Don, in 1888. The fairways run out and back through gentle valleys in the dunes overlooking Aberdeen Bay, touching the neighboring course of Murcar on the ninth green. Scottish golf writer Sam McKinlay wrote of Aberdeen: "I would go so far as to say that there are few courses in these islands with a better, more testing, more picturesque outward nine than Balgownie . . . What adds enormously to the charm of the first half of the course is that the player is never out of sight or sound of the sea except when he is in the valley. Some of the tees stand high on the dunes overlooking Aberdeen Bay, and if you have an eye for the beauties of nature you may see and hear a raft of eider duck mewing just off the shore or a flight of whooper swans heading north."