Playing St. Andrews is always a treat -- even if you go backward.

by Ron Crowley

BELIEVE ME, you have no idea what it's like to announce that you're off to play the Old Course at St.

Andrews backward. You simply can't imagine the effect those words have on a family get-together. Every man, woman and child cocks their head slightly and returns a sad-but-caring stare. Silence. Then a small voice, "Gee, why would you want to do that?"

Good question, especially since hundreds of thousands of golfers have gone to their reward wishing they had played the Old Course the way you're supposed to just once.

It intrigued me, however, to learn that the course had been played forward and backward -- the locals refer to them as right-handed and left-handed -- on alternate weeks from about 1832 until 1914. The first British Amateur at St. Andrews (1886) took place, quite mistakenly, on the left-handed course because the starter followed this schedule. Local golfers have been allowed to play the left-hand course only rarely since World War I, and not at all since 1989.

But there I stood on the first tee, a North American wrapped in Gore-Tex, tapping a Surlyn ball with the metal head of a graphite-shafted driver, keeping beat with the rain, calmly waiting to discover the Old World.

Then, trepidation strolled onto the tee: The kind gentleman from the Links Trust, the serious head greenkeeper and the skeptical caddiemaster -- the keepers of golf's holy trail -- all asked on separate occasions, "Do you know where you're going?" I did, but accepted the map each thrust into my hand.

The diagrams showed the traditional "right-hand" course, the elongated thoroughfare of nine holes laid end-to-end with a corresponding inbound hole to the left. The left-handed course readily suggested itself. Play from the first tee to the 17th green, the 18th tee to the 16th green, the 17th tee to the 15th green, and so on. I would shoot at the flags on the left of the seven double greens and follow the special instructions for the "loop" at the far end.

The Old Course came to have these two circuits because a terrible thing happened in the mid-1800s: Golf became popular. Many attribute this to the invention of the inexpensive gutta-percha ball (1848). Others give equal credit to the Industrial Revolution, which created a wealthy class of British entrepreneurs who had the prosperity and leisure time needed to indulge the consuming passion.

This swarm of new golfers overburdened the Old Course, which at that time consisted of what is essentially the second nine. Players fired at the same flags on the way in as they had on the way out. The congestion precipitated two plans to expand the Old Course. One involved continuing the holes beyond the furthest point so that the course returned in a full circle, but that plan was rejected. The course would be too short; the lore-filled inward holes, including the present 17th, would be eliminated, and players would forego the social amenity of chatting with other players.

Instead, the course would be nearly doubled in width. The enormous banks of whins (gorse) that lined the slender path through the linksland would be hacked back so that new fairways could be added to the right as one progressed out. Eight greens would be stretched to accommodate a second flag. This plan proved no less radical, and more than a few traditionalists thought it downright seditious.

Revolution begat evolution. Bunkers opened and closed according to informed whimsy. Distinct tee boxes were built to the sides of the greens. One of the double greens, the present 17th, began single duty when the present first green was built. The 18th hole was lengthened by moving the green out of a swale and up onto the artificial plateau known today. They even went so far as to put rakes in the bunkers. Supposedly "untouched by human hands since the 1400s," the Old Course finally appeared on a map in its present form in 1879.

The new routing had to be played right-handed and left-handed in order to experience all the pre-expansion holes. The alternate-week schedule for doing so had an important benefit: divot-plagued areas on each layout differed, and the week's "rest" allowed the ground to heal. This impressed the conservators of the West Links at North Berwick, who adopted the scheme.

None of this, of course, entered my mind while gazing across 395 yards to the opening left-hand green, the precarious 17th. Although the graveled road lay on its left, the Road bunker on the right still dominated the hole. The approach simply had to be from the left, preferably with a short iron. That would require a healthy drive into a triangle of ground bordered by the Swilcan burn and the road (out-of-bounds). This tee shot had been significantly more challenging when Halket's bunker resided in the midst of that flat expanse. Its welcome return would force modern players further right and nearer the beach (OB). Otherwise, their indifferent tee shot to the left would find Halket's and a sandy lie some 140 yards from the green beyond the burn.

Golf is all about making choices, and the next tee presented few. The green lay 455 yards away, hidden behind the low buildings of the large hotel. Only a big drive would gain sight of the green, and that meant flirting with Cheape's bunker, which lay dead ahead. The further right one strayed, the more difficult it would be to fit the approach shot between the greenside bunker in front and the OB behind. The further left one wandered, the more likely the ball would either go out-of-bounds or leave a blind shot over the hotel. Be perfect or be damned.

The reversed Old Course had started off spectacularly. Yet it seemed a shame that such terrific holes came so early in the round. Then again, they would be far superior tests of golf than what now confronts match-play opponents headed to extra holes.

Unfortunately, many of the holes that followed were far less inspiring. While out-of-bounds threatened any hooked shot, the entire right side warmly welcomed virtually any degree of slice. Some of St. Andrews' strategic bunkers lost their sinister impact; a few gained importance. On my third hole, the 17th tee to 15th green, a modest drive could easily carry the treacherous trio of pot bunkers known as the Principal's nose, but Cartgate bunker blocked the green.

A hole later, the normally inconspicuous Cottage bunker loomed very large off the tee. Further up, right in front of the green, a pot bunker controlled play entirely. It had to be challenged, according to Dr. Alister Mackenzie, by running a shot in from the right. Mackenzie considered that task fair, and he used this reversed 14th green as a model for the 17th at Augusta National. Of the American cousin he wrote, "Until players have learned to play the desired shot, this will undoubtedly be one of the most fiercely criticized holes." Sorry, but it's high-flying, quick-stopping short irons these days.

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of the left-handed course came at the next hole, the only par-5 on the outward trek, where the notorious Hell bunker barely flickered a mere 123 yards off the tee. Even so, this modest 494-yarder revealed itself as one of the better reversed holes. The pot bunker Benty needed to be avoided in reaching the fairway known as the Elysian Fields. The second shot had to contend with the wall on the left and the collection of bunkers known as the Beardies, which lurked in the middle of the fairway about 150 yards from the green. The putting surface could not be reached in two because a wide blanket of whin-infested rough has grown up over recent decades. One could try to reach the front right of the massive green, the largest in Europe, but the reward would likely be three or more putts across the heaving green.

The additional fairway on the right had been quite accommodating thus far. In truth, it had significantly diminished the overall challenge, and never more so than while playing the 13th fairway to the 12th green. Without the adjacent sixth fairway as a bail-out area, this would surely be one of the game's better short par-4s. Players would be forced to navigate past the Coffin bunkers down an ever-narrowing fairway to a shallow plateau green 351 yards away.

Ahead lay St. Andrews' famous "loop," the seventh through the 12th. It would be played identically as on the right-handed course with two slight adjustments. First, the seventh would start from the 13th tee, and the additional 41 yards would make it a formidable 400-yarder. Second, the 12th would be the same pot-luck par-4 with three bunkers sprinkled in the fairway, except that the flag, the normal sixth, is a few yards further left.

The eighth has the solitary feature of a pot bunker that everyone should be wise enough to take out of play by going long. The ninth and 10th must be the most ordinary holes in championship golf. Straight, flat, driveable at times, these par-4s get the most humble thinking "birdie, easy par."

One's spirits soar, however, at the prospect of sticking a tee shot on the sloping 11th green. With two pot bunkers flanking the entrance, the Eden estuary behind and Scotland's most abundant natural resource swirling, this is a delightful hole.

Sad to say, but the rest of the inward journey had few memorable moments. The sole exception came in approaching the penultimate green, the normal first. Thick rough forced a full carry to the knobbed "front" of the green, which kicked the ball toward the hole and the burn. A real white-knuckler. In contrast, the 18th is, if you can imagine, even more docile than usual because it is virtually impossible to drive the ball out of bounds from the present second tee.

It hadn't been the best of courses; it hadn't been the worst of courses. It hadn't compared favorably with the right-hand course, yet it had proved itself a legitimate layout with a number of exceptional holes. If one could combine its outward nine with those of the inward nine on the right-handed course, one would have the best of the Old Course. One would also have the Old in its earliest 18-hole form with only a few modifications.

Architects of this century have uniformly admired the Old Course, incorporating its strategic design into their work whenever possible. They have ignored, however, one of its subtle lessons, according to authors H. N. Wethered and Tom Simpson, the latter a renowned English designer of this early century: "We are inclined to believe that these holes owe much of their fascination to the fact that there [sic] were, and are still, reversible; that in this old and discarded principle of reversibility lies one of the great possibilities in the way of development so far as modern golf architecture is concerned."