This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

On the occasion of the playing of The Open this week at the Old Course in Scotland, my thoughts have gone to wonderful times for me and my family at the “home of golf.”

“The Open,” as they are careful to say in Europe, will be held for a 30th time at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.

With my wife, Nancy – her parents emigrated from Scotland to the U.S. – I have had the privilege of being in Scotland on five occasions, with Nancy as my tour guide, given her familiarity with the country of her parents’ birth.

Our trips have included several visits to the Old Course.  We usually arrived in St. Andrews on a Sunday to find the course closed to golf on that day every week.  For all intents and purposes, it was a park, with residents and visitors strolling the fairways, taking photos on the Swilcan Bridge (we did), and finding easy access a few yards away to the North Sea, with a sandy beach.

The last time we were in St. Andrews we were with our daughter, Lissy, and her family.  We immediately entered our names into what’s called “the ballot,” essentially a lottery to determine who can get tee times on the Old Course. 

Then, the foreboding reality came. 

I say “foreboding” because the 1^st tee at the Old Course is a major challenge for anyone, if only you have seen the hallowed space on television.

With winning the ballot, we added our names to the list of famous golfers, not to mention regular amateurs, who have teed off on that iconic hole. 

On the day of our tee time, we arrived a bit early, putted on the practice green near the 1^st tee, then stood on the tee as the clock clicked down to our time, read destiny. 

We stood where others have stood over the years – only a few yards away from the clubhouse for the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, the home of the ruling body of golf in Europe, with the 1^st fairway looking wide and inviting, hard by 18^th coming the other way.

All the faces glued to the window of the Royal & Ancient were there no doubt to watch us tee off!

Rather than provide my own description, let me quote from one of my favorite books – Two Years in St. Andrews — by one of my favorite golf authors, George Peper, now the editor of Links Magazine and, before that, a two-year resident in a flat on the 18^th hole at St. Andrews. 

Here is what he wrote:

         “No matter who you are, to stand for the first time on the 1^st tee of the Old Course is to experience the greatest natural laxative in golf.  So intimidating is the opening that Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general who once held the fate of the free world in his hands, couldn’t handle the pressure.  He slinked to the second hole.

         “There you are, barely a dozen steps from the front porch of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, the full weight of its four-storied grayness upon you.  Thirty-two clubhouse windows face that tee, and you can feel eyes piercing from everyone one of them, especially from the Big Room – front and center on the ground floor – where the blue-blazered members sip their gin and tonics and peer imperiously through graduated bi-focals.

         “You feel their eyes, lasered into your temples.  You feel the eyes of every golfer in your group, every golfer waiting to play, every lurking caddy, raking greenkeeper, and passing motorist, every shopkeeper, dog walker, street cleaner, beachcomber, and windsurfer, every gull, snipe, and pigeon, every fisherman on every trawler in the North Sea. 

Most of all you feel the eyes of Old Tom Morris and Harry Vardon, of Henry Cotton and Bobby Jones – of every great player, live or dead, who has ever walked these fabled links.  And you don’t want to disappoint them.”

The good news?  Even with all the internal and external pressure, my daughter piped her drive straight down the middle on the 1^st fairway.  I wasn’t the only one clapping!

I also managed to hit a decent drive, but it’s hard to do while you are clapping.

I have a host of other memories of golf at the Old Course, so will treasure the chance to watch golf again next week on that famous track.  So, live on Old Course!