St. Andrews

We checked out of our B&B and drove to St. Andrews. It was a pretty easy ride with good navigation by Ang... it was easy that is, until about 5 miles from the open, and then it was crazy traffic. Once we got parked where the bus picked us up, we could see the course in the distance. St. Andrews - it was awesome! We first positioned ourselves in a grandstand overlooking the 3rd and 16th adjoining greens. We saw many great players come through - Jose Maria Olazabel, Mark Calcavecchia, Phil Mickelson, Darren Clarke, Sergio Garcia to name just a few... then Jack Nicklaus came through on 3 - what a treat! Playing with Tom Watson, it was truly a treat and pleasure (I should mention, that we learned just after we landed that there was a commemorative 5 pound note with Jack's picture on it, making him only the 3rd person the their 5 pound bill - Ang picked up a couple, so that we could have a nice momento).

Several groups after Jack, it was Tiger - that was very cool... Tiger is leading the tournament and looks solid to win (as it would turn out, he did!). We had some lunch and then moved to the 15th green, we were right next to it, sitting in the front row on the grass! We saw everyone come through again - and got a couple of great pictures of Tiger and Jack putting. We then walked back to the 12th tee, seeing many other players such as Sean O'Hair, Tim Herron, and Chris Riley. From there, we walked up the 17th (the famous Road Hole) and 18th (home hole in front of the clubhouse). We walked to the practice area and saw Ernie Els and Vijay Singh. Ang tried to get Vijay's autograph, but he stopped signing just as she stood right next to him. After many more pictures of the town and the famous 18th Stone Bridge, we watched some final golf of the last groups coming through the Road Hole and then hopped on bus to get back to our car.

We then began the drive to Pitlochry, our home base for the next 3 nights. Found our very nice B&B surprisingly easy and went down for a pint (or two) at McKay's - a pub within crawling distance of our B&B. We met some nice English guys up from Birmingham to see the Open, and talked golf (and they bought us a couple of pints).