John Robins: “I have just discovered the source of all golf!”

Comedian John Robins ditched Fringe Festival beers for links golf and found something very special...

Comedian John Robins ditched Fringe Festival beers for links golf and found something very special…

This month I’m in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. I’ve been coming most years since 2005 and am a marginally better comedian than I am a golfer.

Considering I am less than an hour’s drive from Scotland’s Golf Coast, it is nothing short of scandalous that in all that time I have never ventured out of the city to swing a club. This year, however, one thing is different: I’m off the booze. And that means one thing… LINKS GOLF!

Yes, it’s goodbye to nights of knocking back pint after pint until 4am in festival bars, and hello to driving out of the city early enough to catch the last few revellers heading home to enjoy their hangovers.

My first stop was Leven Links, to play a round with probably the most influential figure in my golfing journey, South African-born YouTuber Golf Sidekick. His brand of ego-free golf, focussing on course management and low risk strategy, meant that even when I was lacking the physical ability to score low, I had a secret weapon – my mind.

Tricks such as taking whatever club you hit most comfortably 180 yards off every tee, adding one shot to the par of every hole, and avoiding at all costs those one-in-100 shots in favour of the sensible play meant that breaking 90 came much earlier than it would have if I’d spent my time drooling over long drive videos and trying to recreate Rory’s swing when I had a six-pint physique.

So, playing with Matt (his real name) really was a dream. True to his philosophy, he didn’t touch his driver once over the 18 holes at a course where golf has been played in some form since 1846. If only I had followed his lead!

Why do I always reach for that blasted club when I know it’s not working for me?! I was hitting my hybrid pretty sweetly into the ever changing winds, but time and again I reached for the least suitable club for the conditions. Matt hit 1, 2 or 3-irons straight, low and long. I hit my driver high, short and left. Ironically, the one I did strike well went a grand total of 157 yards into a brutal headwind.

But playing golf in places like Leven isn’t about the score. I hadn’t played in more than a month, so it was all about the company and the surroundings. Golf in Scotland is different to anywhere else on earth. It feels like golf was invented here by the earth itself, tectonic plates, sea, wind and soil conspiring over millennia, lying in wait for those early pioneers to look out at the rolling dunes towards the sea and think, “Is it just me or does that look like a dog-leg par 4?”

Matt shot one under for the back nine, I lost seven balls. It doesn’t matter. I left feeling that in any other country, golf is an imitation of this. Factory knock-offs of the real thing.

My next stop was a bucket list course only accessible via a kind invitation from a member of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, AKA Muirfield.

Despite not being signposted from the road, a logistical pain as much as a nod to its exclusivity, you can immediately see why it’s a fool’s errand to try to keep this golf course secret. It really is something else!

If I thought Leven had a long history, try adding another 100 years to the records. Muirfield’s membership dates back to 1744. It’s so old, some of its club captains seem to pre-date not only photography but painting too, as silhouettes bear their likeness in the grandest clubhouse I’ve ever seen/peeked in through the window of.

The course is right up there with the best I’ve played, its unique, looping layout ensuring that you never quite settle into the direction of the wind. Everywhere you look is sea, rolling fairway, and wispy rough that blows like fields of wheat.

Luckily, my driver missed straight during the round, and I scored a respectable 94. For a mid-handicapper, playing courses like these in the wind for the first time, anything under 95 is a result. Especially when you’re dealing with the kind of bunkers I would need a decade of instruction to escape from.

But I was most pleased with my lost ball record, going from seven at Leven to zero at Muirfield. The same Titleist AVX accompanied me all the way round and even had the decency to drop from 40ft away on the 3rd hole. “Birdie!” I shouted, fist raised to the sky. “I’m afraid that was for par,” my playing partner responded, with a kind smile.

One thing I’ve learned from Scotland’s Golf Coast, is that just because the wind might make it feel like a par 5, there’s no breeze on the scorecard.

READ MORE FROM JOHN ROBINS
– “The best way to fix your swing? Don’t swing at all!”
– “Golf equipment launches should be more realistic”

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