Last day in St. Andrews: Remembering Bubba

Our last full day in Scotland (the goal is to be out of here by 430 tomorrow morning) and it has been openly discussed that the goal is to “go deep” in terms of gross out.  Groan.

Speaking of groan, I seem to have sustained brain damage on the flight over and I have been singing.  When I reported that my throat hurt last night, which I thought was due to either yelling at the golf ball or singing, I was told “weren’t they one and same thing?”  Funny. My rejoinder was I thought of my singing as more of a moan/groan.  This seemed to work.

Next, was a discussion of what hats to wear.  Mike and Butch both wanted the flat hats, but I suggested wearing yesterday’s Carnoustie hats, blue with monogramming.  Butch says (acc to his Boswell) , “If we showed up in matching hats, wouldn’t that be kind of gay?”  It was wondered what was wrong with that (a la Seinfeld) and he said “we Americans are so liberal” and I pointed out they’d had gay marriage for years.  It was NBD.  A discussion of bovine common law marriage in Scotland ensued.

My Johnson was in form today: when JP came out wearing a pinkish shirt, it was commented on.  He said “it’s magenta” and Butch quipped something unprintable hear.  It was not meant to be complimentary.

One picture shows the bathroom: some time in the week that plastic box has appeared!  Butch used the term dingy for such things.  I will nothing more, except that’s about #2,010 in scat references.

Then we played 45 minutes of euchre.  The kids won the first round 10-8, and the old guys came back to win 10-7. But the rubber game was a skunk – 10-0—to the kids.  Ouch.

The laugh/embarrassment of the day: I came up to the starter and chatted and reached in my pocket, where I knew I had 2 pound (£) coins.  I tried to subtly slip him one and he said no, no.  I was trying to insist when JP says, “Steve, he doesn’t want your ball marker.”  Yes, I had my ball marker from Carnoustie in my hand, not a pound coin.  I ended up giving Dave Two £s instead, making him take them.  “He was thinking, ‘I’ve got plenty of ball markers, thank you’” was just one of the quips.

Golf stuff:  We returned to the sight of beers (okay, stouts) on Tuesday – the Castle course.  We were told till 10 years ago it was a farm and they moved a lot of dirt to build the place. It is not only a fine facility – the first place with a driving range right near where you play golf, for instance – it is a beautiful property in terms of its vistas.

Here’s the picture link.

There were three pars on the short par-4 first hole, and JP played decently until #8, when he missed a short par 3 in a horrible spot and made a big number.

The course has constant great views.  The pictures are spectacularly – to the northwest to St. Andrews, across the bay to Carnoustie (we were told), and just the sea (I have one photo of the buoys on what we think were lobster traps).  We went toward town to start, climbing the hillside away from the sea, then at six dropping like 50 feet back down.  The last holes on both sides run along the sea.

The highlight were pars on 17 & 18 by Butch, and Mike had a par on 18, too, but put his approach on the wrong level of the green and had no chance to make it coming off the ski slope.  The 17th is over the coast and the directions were to hit it left and let it kick right and forward.  Butch hit a shot we thought was short, but it hit hard and scooted right and forward, as described, and he had a make able birdie putt.  Then on 18 he hit two four irons and wedge on the par 5 and again missed a make able birdie putt.

But the real highlight was remembering Bubba.  We talked about how he’d have loved to have done a trip like this, with golf and pints and cards.  And we again thought it was his karma that gave us such glorious weather – as you can see, it was sunny again today, with a mild breeze, at times maybe 10 mph, but there was a period of almost none.

On the last tee, JP took a ball, wrote Bubba’s name on it, and hit a driver into the sea.  Butch videoed it.  We were a bit verklempft.

John and Mike killed Butch and I for the six holes they were partners, so they came out ahead by two for the day.

Non-golfing :  The Castle’s bar didn’t have any nachos or anything to snack.  So we decided to just go for dinner.  The peri peri chicken at Nando’s is pictured.  If you don’t know Nando’s, ALL they do is chicken, and it’s cheap.  We got a whole chicken, their ten wing platter, which came with 4 large sides.  Spicy rice, mashed potates, corn on the cob and garlic bread.  Yes, many green veggies.

Butch went to get ice cream to go with the sticky toffee pud tonight :)

And we are packed, at least as far as we can get.  See picture.

There was a moment of consternation when Mike couldn’t find his Old Course yardage book, but we found it…in the bag it came in.  In fairness, surprisingly for what you pay to play there, the Old Course book is the only one we got all week that isn’t in a spiral binder, nor does it have a scorecard in the back (handy to keep score when you have the book in and out of your pocket all day)  The Old Course gives everyone a goody bag (the one from Castle course is pictured), too, and mine is intact.  :). Never touched.  A souvenir.

And there we are.  We all agreed we are ready to go home.  The course was a tough walk with lots of elevation change (the worst of the week, including Valley Country Club in Hazleton on Thursday) and more walking from green to tee than we’d seen here all week.  Most of the courses you walk off and walk right onto the next tee. Not today.

But we are worn out, happy, had a great time and now have the fun of an early flight to Dublin, the long flight to JFK, and then the wonderful drive to Bloomsburg.  Rah rah. #