The back nine at Kingsbarns is a golf porn orgy of Caligulan proportions. This does not mean that there is a gaggle of Roman peasants being tortured and chased by a man in a toga driving a golf chariot, but that we had the pleasure of oohing, aahing, hacking and laughing our way around nine of the best holes you could ever wish to play. Nothing could be done to improve the layout. The feeling you get as you walk down the fairways is unbelievable. Anyone who wants to have that spine-tingling rush as they step on to every tee should visit here. It is golf in its purest, hardest, most beautiful form and to worship at it for a few hours, no matter how rain-soaked, was one of the highlights of GP’s year.

“You little beauty,” screams a soaked Owen as his 60ft par putt drains into the cup on the par five 12th. The 12th is a 606 yard leviathan that hugs the coastline and for a man who only pars seven holes out of 90 all week and misses more four-foot putts than Langer at his yippiest, this is what keeps him going. To par the most difficult and scenic hole on the course is what being a golf punk is all about, not finding fairway after fairway and green after green. It’s important to acknowledge that you may never play like Retief or Vijay so you have to take the great moments and cherish them. Everyone wants to hit shots like Tiger, but enjoyment, company and scenery are the great things in golf, whether you play off one or one hundred and one.

3.25am. Old Course Hotel.

“Shall we jump on?” asks Owen as he and Richard gaze down the road hole. “We could jump the wall,” he replies, “or we could rob Dan’s car keys and get a couple of clubs,” he says with a mischievous glint in his eye. Without waiting for an answer, Richard has bounded through the patio doors and is rifling through the unconscious equipment editor’s pockets. “Where are his keys?” he barks at Shaun who is wrapped in a fetching dressing gown that gives him the appearance of an Oscar Wilde conquest, “In his pocket, probably. Why, what are you up to?” he asks, “Me and Owen are going to play the road hole before the sun comes up,” he says. “Count me in,” says Shaun, “I’ll check his jacket.” Craigie and Giles soon join in the search for the elusive keys while Owen surveys the scene with the look of a man who has just been offered a platinum ring ten seconds after having his hands chopped off. “C’mon boys,” he says, “I would kill for one minute on the road hole, but it’s bad karma. I reckon we’d be guaranteeing ourselves a lifetime of hell from the Golfing Gods.” “You’re probably right,” says Giles, “But we’re all shite anyway.” This is a fair point, but as the keys fail to turn up, everybody starts to rethink the doomed plan.

“Do you reckon we’d get screwed if we got caught?” asks Craigie, “I think we’d get hung, drawn and quartered by a baying mob of R & A henchmen,” says Owen, wrestling with his conscience.

“But it would be the golf story to end all stories,” says Shaun. As we realise that the keys are probably hidden in the hotel safe, everyone returns outside to look at the stretch of mystical turf that we could have walked. Everyone knows that it would have been the wrong decision, like sleeping with your best friend’s stunning girlfriend. But it doesn’t stop you thinking about it, and wanting it so much that you lie awake making a mental tally chart of the pros and cons (Steady on young scamp, we’ve told you about Communist talk before – Ed).

Nobody spoke for about ten minutes as we sat and watched the rising sun slowly pour light on the greatest temptation we had ever faced. In 20 years time we will all be boring people in pubs with our road hole stories, and probably half of the people sat on the wall that night will tell it as it was, while the other half will have doctored it so that they drove over the work shed, lashed a 7-iron into the bunker, chipped to four-feet before knocking in for par before being lured into the bunker for a rousing bout of shove-penny-shove with 27 Bunker Babes.

The road hole is, no matter what people say about the 17th at Sawgrass, the most revered hole in golf. It has had a book written about it, it had a scoring average of 4.3 at the 2000 Open, and even Tiger didn’t manage to birdie it when he finished 19-under to win that year. The feeling of regret will probably haunt us all for years, but really, you can’t sneak onto The Road Hole, at least not in jeans and trainers.

“Giles you tart, wake up, its 10am,” begs Owen, “We were meant to tee off at 8.15, and you’ve got to play Leven this afternoon,” after a few groans Giles rises from his slumber and into his golf clothes. At the Devlin, we meet the latest in a long line of affable and staunch Scots in John Kerr, the course professional. “Any chance of a buggy as well,” says Richard, “What’s up boys,” says John, “A few too many sasparillas last night was it?” he asks, while handing us dry shoes to replace our sodden ones from Kingsbarns. As we gaze across the bay to Carnoustie, the feeling that we have found golfing nirvana silences four self-pitying hangovers. The sea is smashing into the rocks, a few gulls swoop low looking for tardy fish, and a hanging mist is rolling away across the sea.

That afternoon. Leven Links.

“Go on, play it as it lies,” taunts Dan as Richard contemplates moving his ball from some ground under repair behind a wire fence, “OK” he replies as his crap hair flaps in the wind. Richard opens his stance, grips low on his wedge, and delicately coaxes a chip off the face of his lob wedge. As Giles, Dan and Craigie watch the ball take one hop straight into the hole, Richard leaps straight into the arms of Giles, who lets out a primal yell to celebrate his first money win of the weekend. The Scoonie burn shimmers in the background, and the local ASBO kids pull wheelies on their BMXs as two delighted punks jig around the 18th green.

The Next Morning.

After a night made up of gut-rot red wine, enough cigarettes to last Keith Richards a guitar solo and 40 minutes sleep under a snooker table, Owen hooks up with Giles. With the GP Volvo loaded up like the Trotter van on market day, they say goodbye to the Busted boys and head off to meet Mr. Vousden at his home track of Letham Grange, where they get one last lesson in the black arts of on-course psychology before spectacularly cocking up the return leg of their journey by taking an unintended detour through Newcastle.

To the untrained eye this whole affair was a glorified getaway for a group of people with dodgy swings and drinking problems. But that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface. Twenty-four hour golf porn, fantastic people, amazing places. This is really where golf is all about.

Words by Owen Blackhurst

Pictures by Shaun McGuckian, Owen Blackhurst and Daniel Owen

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