The links

The land was here first. Whatever else is true of a links course, that is the part that matters: nobody moved this ground into position, and the holes were laid over it in 1897 by a man who walked it for a week and then put pegs in.

What that leaves is a course that is unfair in ways an architect would not choose and interesting in ways an architect could not invent. Two of the greens sit in hollows you cannot see into from the fairway. One fairway is eighteen paces wide at exactly the distance a good drive finishes. The eleventh is a hundred and forty yards and it takes more cards than the fifth, which is four hundred and seventy-one.

The turf is fescue and bent on sand. It drains within the hour, it plays firm in every month of the year, and the ball runs. Coming from inland golf, the adjustment is not to the wind — everyone expects the wind. It is to the ground.