Links golf is very difficult

Is links golf difficult to play, if you’re not used to it?

I grew up in Derbyshire, which is about as far as it’s possible to get from the seaside in the UK, so links golf isn’t exactly my natural habitat.

In fact, until this weekend I’d only ever played one round on a links course, when I was lucky enough to have a work-related trip to Royal Birkdale, back in 2014. I don’t remember too much about that day, except that it was really difficult and I spent a lot of time hunting for a small white ball in some impenetrable gorse and heather.

This weekend, 12 of us had our annual golf weekend and we chose to spend it on the west coast of Scotland, home to some of the most famous links of all, including Royal Troon, which hosts the Open Championship this year.

We played rounds at The Irvine Golf Club, Kilmarnock Barassie and, most prestigious of the three, Prestwick Golf Club (the original home of the Open).

(Check out our course reviews here for Barassie Links and Prestwick).

All three were really interesting and amazing places to play, and Dave or I will do a course review at some point, but my overall impression of links golf can be summed up in two words: bloody difficult.

The weather makes all the difference

To be fair, the weather was emphatically not on our side for most of the weekend. At all times we had at least two of the deadly trio of strong winds, heavy rain and freezing temperatures. For large chunks of the weekend, we had all three, and at times it did feel more like some kind of Duke of Edinburgh Platinum endurance test, instead of golf with some mates.

^{Irvine Golf Club on a very windy day}

I’m sure things would be very different on a nice, calm and sunny day, but I really struggled with the conditions. I just don’t have the ability to hit the sort of low, punched shots into greens that a 45mph wind demands (not on purpose anyway). I’m also not accurate enough to avoid the gorse, and when you go into that stuff you can forget about even looking for your ball, never mind playing out of it.

I’ve never played in wind like this

When the wind gets up on these courses, it’s an absolute killer: there’s very little shelter, so you just get constantly battered by it. With the wind behind, I was regularly over-shooting the green by 20 yards, and dealing with a cross-wind was almost impossible for me.

^{A ‘testing’ afternoon at Kilmarnock Barassie (sound up!)}

Playing into the wind was no picnic, either. On the 10th hole at Prestwick (a glorious but brutal 450 yard uphill par 4), we were playing straight into a very strong ‘breeze’. I hit a really solid driver into the middle of the fairway, which must have only gone about 200 yards because I still had 250 left.

Sod it, I thought, and decided to hit my driver again, off the deck. I caught it really well and it headed right at the green, but still came up 30 yards short. I made a 5, which was probably my best hole of the day.

Don’t get me wrong, these were three lovely, historic golf courses and I feel lucky to have played them. I’d love to revisit them on a nice summer’s day, if they have those in Scotland?

But it was hard. Seriously hard. I play off 10.5 and just about broke 100 round each of these courses. I wasn’t the only one to struggle, though. In our group of 12, the individual winner scored a total of 84 stableford points and didn’t break 30 on any given day. He won by four points.