“How about,” I say, “we take advantage of the fact that I’m home this summer and everyone is in such fine shape by going to the actual Stonehenge. And while we’re at it, we can go to Scotland. We haven’t taken a family vacation in years. Let’s get out of town. See a bit of the world. Expand our horizons.”
Noah embraces the idea immediately, as he would any proposal inspired by This Is Spinal Tap. Sarah studies me with the same quizzical smile I’ve noticed now and then when I bring dinner to the table. I wouldn’t presume to interpret a woman’s smile, but if I had to attempt a translation it would be something along the lines of, “Who is this impostor residing in the body of Travis McKinley, and is there any chance he’ll stick around for a while?”
38
THREE WEEKS LATER, THE four of us are standing in the parking lot of EuroTour Rentals, just outside Gatwick International Airport, picking up the keys to our large white van. England is hardly exotic travel. Nevertheless, everything looks different and smells different—maybe it’s the gas they use—and there is a bracing snap of foreignness in the early-morning air.
Since I blurted out my proposal, our travel plans have been revised and refined. The first issue was Louie and our unwillingness to abandon the pooch for several weeks while the rest of us go gallivanting around the United Kingdom. For a while we leaned toward a full-service motor home, complete with comfortable beds, a kitchen, and a bathroom with shower. The deal breaker was the ten-minute video detailing how to empty and wash the plastic receptacle connected to the toilet. At that point, we decided we’d take our chances on dog-friendly bed-and-breakfasts and small hotels and a camper van, which in a pinch can sleep four.
Thank goodness, we lowered our sights. Keeping this large unfamiliar vehicle on the correct side of the road is challenge enough. Conceptually, driving on the left instead of the right doesn’t sound hard, but the old pattern is so ingrained and the consequences for screwing up so severe that in the first couple of hours, the phrase RIGHT equals DEATH is never far from my mind, and after navigating several tricky intersections, I have a cramp in my left hand from clutching the wheel so tightly. If Sarah weren’t reading the signs and navigating, I don’t think I could handle it.
Stonehenge is near Amesbury, 90 miles southwest of London. Including a quick stop for breakfast, it takes us three hours, and when we turn off the highway into a huge parking lot lined with tour buses, it’s just after noon. Before we disembark, we reinsert the soundtrack of This Is Spinal Tap and play “Stonehenge.” The song begins with an intro spoken by Nigel, and whatever drama it delivers is derived from the smoke machine:
In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, lived a strange race of people, the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing, but their legacy remains hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge.…
Then we pull off our sweaters, revealing the Spinal Tap T-shirts underneath. Sarah wears basic black with the name of the band across the chest. Noah’s has an illustration of Nigel’s amplifier set to 11, and I’ve got the “Tap into America” concert tee, listing the scheduled tour dates, five of which are labeled CANCELLED. I don’t let Sarah put a T-shirt on Louie because clothes on a dog are undignified.
After a last check in the mirror, we step out of the van. We line up at the Welcome Center and purchase tickets. Then we line up again for the bus that ferries you to the site. Then we file off and walk out toward the circle of stones in the center of a large open plain. “We did it,” says Noah. “We’re actually here.”
One minute you’re in the kitchen flipping pancakes and talking shit. The next you’re in a field in southern England gazing up at stones the approximate color, size, and shape of whales. Even more than the immensity of the stones themselves, we’re gawking at the scale of the undertaking and the grunt labor and engineering required to transport them hundreds of miles, prop them up, and plant them in this near-perfect circle. This may be the first public works project on record, and it occurs to me that while we would all love to leave a lasting impression, what we really need is something to do while we’re here.
The realization is a little scary. As much as I’ve been enjoying dropping off and picking up Noah at camp, doing the grocery shopping, and roasting the occasional piece of fish or chicken, I suspect it’s not going to be enough of a project for long. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get out there and wrestle with the big rocks again.
As we’re all trying to haul aboard this epic scene, each in our own way, I notice another couple with a boy and a girl a bit older than Noah. The father, who has long hair parted in the middle and circular wire-rimmed glasses, has the air of a doddering old rock star. As he gets closer, I see why. It’s Ozzy Osbourne. When he’s safely out of earshot, I share the celebrity sighting with Sarah and Noah.
“See that guy over there? He’s Ozzy Osbourne, and way back in the mists of time, when Druids roamed the land, he was the front man of a heavy metal band called Black Sabbath, and they were Spinal Tap before Spinal Tap.”
“Like Stonehenge was the pyramids before the pyramids.”
“Pretty much. Not only that, Ozzy bit the head off a bat.”
“No way,” says Noah.
“Yes way.”
“Travis, was this really necessary?” asks Sarah.
“Absolutely. It’s an important part of rock history.”
39
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the courtesy van begins its trip north. We stop for tea and crumpets in a thatched-roof village in Oxfordshire and for lunch at a café on a canal in Manchester, where, at the end of the nineteenth century, England first turned away from that rural life of the Cotswolds and cast its lot for better or worse with the Industrial Revolution. Sarah, our on-board librarian, informs us that Manchester was once the largest cotton-producing center in the world and the scene of the first bread and labor riots. Noah is more taken by the fact that its residents are called Mancunians, or Mancs, and their word for chewing gum is chuddy.
Near Carlisle, the road climbs into the Cheviot Hills, and just beyond Longtown in northern Cumbria, we pass a road sign reading FÀILTE GU ALBA, Scottish Gaelic for WELCOME TO SCOTLAND. At the first opportunity, I pull off at the tiny town of Canobie so that I can take my first steps on ancestral sod. It might not be up there with Armstrong on the moon, but I feel an unanticipated shiver of excitement and maybe also of recognition.
Across from the desk in my office is an engraving of a farmhouse that has been passed down across several generations. The house, made of rough-hewn wooden planks, is built into the side of a hill and shaded by two V-shaped apple trees, and according to family legend was the birthplace of my great-great-grandfather Jamie McKinley. On the back of the engraving is the barely legible notation Balquhidder, summer, 1887. Balquhidder is in the council area of Stirling, in the county of Perthshire, between the two slightly larger towns of Strathyre and Lochearnhead. About an hour and fifteen minutes north of Glasgow, we pull off the A8 and travel the one-lane rural roads in search of the farmhouse rendered in the picture.
As we’ve traveled north, the landscape has grown more rugged and less peopled, and in the next hour we see fewer than half a dozen houses, none of which is a match. We do, however, pass a hill with a similar slope and landscape to the ones in the engraving, and when we circle back and park, Sarah spots the apple trees and the charred base of a chimney. Eventually, by matching the scene with the picture of the engraving on Sarah’s phone, we confirm with a fair degree of certainty that it is the remains of my great-great-grandfather’s house.
For the next several hours, we walk the property in every direction and get the lay of the land, which has stark, desolate beauty. Then we buy some provisions in the nearest town and picnic on what once was probably the kitchen of the old house. Halfway through a bottle of wine, Sarah and I decide to park the van on the old homestead and spend the night.
“Noah,” I say, “now we know where we’re from…at least to some degre
e.”
40
WE SLEEP IN—THERE’S no early checkout time in the courtesy van—and don’t get back on the road till early afternoon. The farther north we go the more dramatic the landscapes, but as taken as I am by the iconic terrain, the scenic bits of Scotland aren’t flying by fast enough. In a matter of hours, I’ll be teeing it up for the first time in the land where not just my earliest forebears, but golf itself, were conceived, and as much as I’m enjoying the braes (hills) and the burns (streams) and the lochs (lakes), it’s hard to think of much else.
Back in Winnetka, when the itinerary was still in its early stages, everyone conceded I couldn’t visit Scotland without playing at least one round. My first thought, of course, was St. Andrews, where nearly a thousand years ago the first shepherd hit a stone with a crooked staff, but the Old Course will be hosting the Open Championship at the end of the month and is closed to the public until after the tournament. My second choice was Royal Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands, where we’re heading now. While less renowned, Royal Dornoch is nearly as revered by cognoscenti, and its remoteness keeps away all but the most committed pilgrims.
As the afternoon ticks by, we push due north past Perth and Dundee and Inverness, and even with a heavy right foot, we don’t arrive in Dornoch till nearly five. At most golf destinations, such a late arrival would require postponing, but in this case it doesn’t even cause any uptight urgency, because in mid-July in Dornoch, which sits on the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska, the sun doesn’t set till after 10 p.m., which gives us plenty of time to check into our B&B and have a quick look at the town.
A couple of blocks past the cathedral is the aptly named Golf Road, which dead-ends after a few hundred yards at a small parking lot. To the left is an unassuming white stone clubhouse. To the right are the first tee and the putting green, and between them a large, high sign announces that you have finally reached the Royal Dornoch Golf Club. Except for the lone figure on the putting green, there is not another golfer in sight.
Even without the sign, there is no mistaking the fact that you have reached the promised land. The course sits at the northernmost point of the known golfing world high above Dornoch Firth and the North Sea, and you feel the freedom of all that ocean and sky, combined with a rare tranquility. Imagine a course as beautiful as Augusta National without the color correction, and as epic as Pebble, where without a tee time you can drive up at 5:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon, park your van in the empty lot, and walk on.
41
WITHIN MINUTES, ME AND the single on the putting green, a man named Andy—in his early sixties with a pencil-thin moustache—head to the first tee, and after a long day on the road, Sarah, Noah, and Louie are happy to tag along and stretch their legs. It’s classic Scottish weather, cool and blustery, rain one instant, sunshine the next, and yet somehow the conditions seem perfect, and it’s clear that my fellow travelers are enjoying the spongy turf and ocean air as much as me.
The first half dozen holes are on the upper portion of the course. Although you feel and see the ocean from nearly every hole, there’s also the sense of being protected and shielded from it, and with no one ahead of or behind us, there’s scant evidence of humanity. I know the course has been played for three hundred years, but as we stand on the 7th tee, a nearly 500-yard par 4 tucked away on a high plateau bordered on both sides by thick gorse, I feel less like a golfer than like an explorer who has stumbled onto some mythical uncharted territory. I feel like Columbus wading ashore in the New World.
In such a magical setting, I’d be content just scraping it along and keeping up with Andy, who plays off a 3, but in fact, I’m doing quite a bit better than that. Scottish golf, which plays closer to the ground, fits my swing and my eye, and my game shows the benefit of those three months on the range. The swing feels good and although I didn’t roll a single ball on the practice green, so does the putter, as if the pace of these greens is part of my genetic inheritance. How else to explain the fact that I’ve only needed eight putts on the first six holes?
“I’m afraid to ask what you’re shooting,” says Sarah when I touch her hand on the 7th tee. “I haven’t seen you miss a shot or a putt.”
“Give me a kiss and I’ll try not to think about it.”
With our second shots on 8, we finally drop out of the clouds. For the next nine holes the course hugs the beach and plays to a track of cawing gulls and breaking surf, and the wind picks up. Like the teammate of a pitcher working on a no-hitter, Andy fastidiously avoids any mention of my string of birdies. He fills me in on his plumbing business in Edinburgh, his two married daughters, his wife, who at this very moment is probably buying an overpriced antique in town. And when I hole a long chip on 7 for yet another birdie, he asks, “What do you think of John Daly’s chances at St. Andrews?”
“With JD, anything is possible,” I say. “Good or bad.”
“That’s the wonder of him, isn’t it? He doesn’t give a toss.”
On 16, the fairway climbs back up into the sky, and when you reach the green and turn back, it feels like the entire northern coast of Scotland is stretched out at your feet. Before I hit, I find Sarah’s eyes again. I finish par, birdie, birdie, and when our last putts are safely holed, Andy reaches for my hand and slaps me on the shoulder. “Andy,” I say, “this is a round I’ll never forget.”
“I would hope the hell not.”
After Andy apologizes for not being able to buy me a drink—he has a long drive home ahead of him—he hands the card to Sarah and says, “I’m going to entrust this to you.” And while I get reacquainted with Noah and the pooch, Sarah does the math.
“You shot a sixty-one,” she says, and shows me the card, which is signed and annotated. In tight precise script, he has written Andy under Player A and The Yank under Player B, and each of my nine birdies is circled.
“I had no idea.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay. I had a pretty good idea.”
Inside the pro shop, Sarah gets a recommendation for dinner from the assistant pro. “While I’ve got you, what’s the course record?”
“That would be sixty-two,” he says.
“Then you might want to make a copy of this,” she says, and hands him the scorecard. “Sixty-one, straight out of the parking lot after six hours of driving.” It’s the first and only time I’ve ever heard Sarah brag on me, and I kind of like it.
An hour later, the three of us are eating fish and chips at an outside table of a Main Street restaurant and Sarah and I are sipping thirty-year-old single-malts. At 9:45, the sun still clings to a corner of the sky. “I think Scotland is pretty terrific,” I say.
“Me too,” says Noah.
“It’s wonderful,” agrees Sarah, “and you’ve got to try to play a tournament while we’re here.”
“Really? This isn’t supposed to be a golf trip.”
“I know, but you’ve never played better and these conditions are tailor-made for your game.” She drains the last of her whiskey and asks the waiter for two more. “You just shot a course record on a course you had never seen before without taking a single practice shot. And you spent the previous six hours behind the wheel. Call Finchem, he likes you. Explain the situation. Ask him for a favor. You’ve got nothing to lose.”
“It’s almost ten p.m.”
“Which means it’s five in Florida. He’s not a slacker. Even on a Friday, he’ll be there.”
“And what do I ask for, exactly?”
“A sponsor’s exemption into a European Senior event. You said there was one in Scotland this week. Come on. Don’t overthink it. Just make the call.”
Hesitantly, I pull out my phone. “It doesn’t look like I have cell service.”
She points at the anachronistic red pay phone directly across the street.
“Aren’t you going to get sick of watching me play? I’m not always going to shoot sixty-ones.”
“Walking a course here is nothing like in America. The terrain, the air
, the feel of the ground. It’s wonderful.”
“And how about Noah?”
He doesn’t look as enthused at the prospect as Sarah, but then again, he isn’t on his second Scotch.
“Trust me, it will be good for Noah to see his father play and to see him play in Scotland. And although I’m a little embarrassed to say it, I forgot how much I love watching you play. It feels like being in college again.”
I cross the street, push the hinged door shut behind me, and stare over at Sarah, who lifts her glass and smiles. An overseas operator charges the call to my home number and puts me through to Ponte Vedra.
“Tim, how are you? It’s Travis McKinley.”
“Travis.…you sound like you’re calling from dark side of the moon. Where the hell are you?”
“Dornoch…in the Scottish Highlands.”
“I know where it is, Travis. I’ve been there five times. I love that town.”
“I can see why.”
“So you’re calling to check in and fill me in on your travels? How’s Sarah?”
“Great. In fact, I’m calling at her request.”
“Really?”
“You see, she and this guy named Andy, a plumber from Edinburgh…and Noah and Louie, our dog…”
“Travis, have you been drinking?”
“Of course I’ve been drinking. It’s Scotland.…Yeah, so Sarah and Andy and Noah and Louie just saw me shoot a sixty-one at Royal Dornoch. Teed off at 6 p.m.”
Miracle at St. Andrews Page 9
