2.23am. St Andrews.

The Golf Punks have just been handed enough saturated fat to keep Rik Waller away from a microphone for 20 minutes and we’re walking down the main drag in St Andrews. With The Old Course in the distance, there’s a street party kicking off to celebrate Scotland’s 2-1 win over Moldova and we are in the middle of the four day golf break from heaven. Welcome to Scotland, home of legendary links courses, whisky and Irn Bru.

GP have swooped into town to walk in the footsteps of Old Tom Morris, kneel down at the temple of golf and spread love amongst the locals. We have lined up hotels fit for a Sultan and golf courses that verge on the orgasmic. Golf is a lifestyle choice so clean off the clubs, cancel that weekend in Tenerife and join the Caledonian fun.

‘Are you really entrusting the good ship GP to a bunch of young turks who have been festering away in a dark room with the office mouldy cup collection?’ I hear you cry. The short answer is yes.

In the blue car, a man who knows more about shafts than Jenna Jameson, spends the weekend morphing into Hitler due to a watertight itinerary and still finds time to teach the locals how to moonwalk, GP’s equipment editor; Dan ‘Dancing Slippers’ Owen. In the car with Dan, coming straight out of Portsmouth, proud owner of five regional accents and a gent who gets turned down more times than a coffee flavoured chocolate, Shaun ‘The Mongrel’ McGuickan.

Hailing from junction 26 of the M6, a fellow who drives his motor like your Nan, takes more wrong turns than an American election and possesses the best bad shot scowl in Lancashire, Giles ‘Crash and Burn’ Cornwall.

In the seat next to Giles, currently in the running for the worst navigator in the world, owner of a haircut that didn’t suit Ringo Starr and a chap who could talk a deaf man to sleep, Owen ‘did you see where that went?’ Blackhurst.

Now here’s a suggestion, if you’re going to start a madcap four-day golfing odyssey involving alcohol, rain, gorse and blisters, start at somewhere like the Balbirnie Hotel. This Grecian style mansion set in the middle of a retina-scorching 416 acre estate was built by the ruling Balfour family in 1777, and draws astonished gasps from anyone lucky enough to wind their way down its tree-lined entrance. It touched Giles to the point that he almost rammed the GP Volvo into fifty thousand pounds worth of SUV. Some quarters believe that two pints of warm bitter and a stale cheese roll should be the highlight of your off-course activities. The choice is yours, dear reader, but surely there’s nothing better than a few slivers of smoked beef with rocket and Parmesan to warm the cockles after a day of thinned wedges and sliced drives. The drinking quarters at Balbirnie are fit for any discerning golf punk; we’re talking leather armchairs, opulent artwork and more single malts and diverse vodkas than Andy Goram’s dustbin.

The following morning.

Sixth tee. Balbirnie course. “Never, in all my time, have I seen anyone down there,” laughs the greenkeeper as Owen struggles to find his ball in some deep rough seven yards away from the tee. “There neither,” he chuckles, as our man thrashes his next shot into a freshly mowed tee bank. The South (Dan and Shaun) whip the North (Giles and Owen) on a great opening track, not without the help of the laughing greenie, who seems to fire up his strimmer whenever one of the Lancashire two tee up.

While Dan and Shaun programme the satellite navigation system for our next journey, totalling seven miles, Owen and Giles move on closer to the holy land of St Andrews to play the Ladybank course. On arrival, we got our first glimpse of the man who would have us in a mental headlock all week. Step forward all round legend and possessor of a wealth of golfing stories; Martin ‘I won’t mention that water down by the green’ Vousden.

After nine holes of “Owen, do you breathe in or out on your back swing?” and “I think you’d better reload”, Messrs Vousden and Blackhurst come across a lone golfer. As the group up ahead are rather sluggish, Martin enquires whether he would like to join up with us. “Yeah sure,” he replies in a drawl. “But you might regret it”.

“Where are you from Bill?” asks Martin, “Austin, Texas,” he replies, “That’s OK, we’ll still talk to you,” jokes Martin, “I did not vote for that man,” says Bill, “and neither did any of my friends”. As well as being a liberal American and a lucid raconteur, Bill is a senior lecturer in photography at Austin University on a solo golfing gallop around the east coast of Scotland. He is also, due to his love of the game, remarkably patient after hitting a boatload of bad shots. Couple this with his burning passion for liquid refreshment and you have a golf punk of the highest order.

“You dancer,” shouts Owen as ‘Skill’ Bill sprints past him off the tee to catch a ball he has just launched vertically into the ether. “Meant it all the way,” grins Bill as he screams another ball onto the adjoining train line. In paraphrasing the great West Indian writer, CLR James, the phrase: “what does he know of golf, when golf is all he knows,” is probably true of a lot of golfers. Which is why so many rant, rave and throw clubs after a poor shot. Bill just hitches up his belt and launches into a monologue about politics, or country music, and these are the reasons why we invite him to Kingsbarns the following afternoon. But not before we’ve investigated the fleshpots of St Andrews.

11.45pm. The Ginhouse.

The Ginhouse stands smack bang in the middle of South Street, just around the corner from where public burnings took place in the 15th Century. After a furious ninety-minute drinking session encompassing Scottish Pimms and a Yeltsin of vodka, the GP band are in full flow. Dan and Owen are stood back-to-back playing air guitar to Oasis while Shaun and Giles are both whining and monkey-walking in full Gallagher style. As the last strains of Supersonic wail from the speaker, Giles comes stumbling back from the bar with four sambucas and Shaun sets fire to his tongue. Just as we begin to attract the attention of the natives, a large doorman signals that it’s time for us to flag a taxi and head back to Balbirnie. But we’ll be back.

The Next Morning

Giles skips downstairs for breakfast to find Shaun welded to the sofa by a stream of whiskey-laden dribble. He never made it to his bed. Three slaps and a finger in the ear later and McGuckian manages to drag his tortured frame off the sofa and back into the GP Volvo.

“I don’t mind the rain,” says some idiot as we pull up at Kingsbarns to meet Martin, Bill and the Busted boys. Within seconds of this statement the blue sky is black, drizzle is falling and Scottish Busted are bouncing down the steps with hands outstretched.

Now, a quick note for the uninitiated. The Busted boys are not a Scottish version of their large browed English counterparts, they are Richie and Craigie, a pair of GP legends picked up last year in Troon on the inaugural Open preview excursion. They might have dodgy hair, they may dress like Busted, but they don’t stop until the sun is up and they play off eight and four.

Sometime in the late 18th Century, The Merchants and Lairds of Kingsbarns formed the Kingsbarns Golfing Society. They played a nine-hole layout that encompassed part of the present course, yet were stopped in their tracks in 1850 when the tenant farmer from the adjoining Cambo Estate ripped up the links and converted it to pasture. The stretch of coast lay quiet to shouts of ‘fore’ until 1922, when Willie Auchterlonie, the 1893 Open Champion, designed a new nine-hole track. Everything was running smoothly until, showing scant regard for the etiquette of the game, German planes started bombing at the onset of the Second World War and the land again reverted to farmland. During construction of the new course. A 300-year-old bridge built by French prisoners around the time of The Napoleonic Wars was excavated, and this now carries golfers across the 16th Century burn that runs in front of the 18th green.

“Have you ever seen anyone look so lonely on a golf course,” Martin asks Shaun as they watch Owen trudge through the soaking rough. He hasn’t found the fairway for about an hour, the rain is sheeting down and he’s lost his third ball of the hole. Yet even the dank wetness cannot obscure the sensory overload that is a toddle around Kingsbarns.

“Rum and hot chocolate for all the boys?” enquires Elspeth, lady of remarkable patience and unfaltering generosity as we troop into the clubhouses for a half time clothes change. “If you want to carry on, that’s fine by me, but if not I’ll close the course.” Although this means that Elspeth will have to wait another four hours, she is more than happy to do so and even finds time to book us into the best Indian restaurant in Scotland. Elspeth, we salute you.

» Part 2