CARNOUSTIE GOLF LINKS

Carnoustie has a reputation as being one of the hardest golf courses in the world and therefore has the nickname of Carnasty. It doesn’t HAVE to be hard, but it’s certainly a tough test.

Despite being seaside, you don’t really see the sea at all - but you feel it, and the immediate hazards are the numerous bunkers and burns which wind their way through the course. (No fewer than five times in the last two holes.) The third hole is short, but has a burn in front of the green you’ll have to navigate and some of the aforementioned bunkers. Those bunkers get hungry.

We played just after The Open (where you can see the grandstands still up). Can you see the burn in front of the green because we could not. Carnoustie is a course we would strongly encourage you to take a caddie.

One of the most famous holes in all of golf - and certainly at Carnoustie - is the sixth hole, which probably had a name prior to Ben Hogan playing in The Open, but is now called Hogan’s Alley. Ben Hogan only played in one Open, and won it. On this hole, a 578 yard par-5 that is narrow with OB to the left as well as a litany of centerline pot bunkers, Hogan simply took them all out of play with conservative tee shots that all landed between the bunkers and the left OB.

As a certain Frenchman could tell you, there’s no coasting into the final holes here as they may be the hardest finishing holes in all of golf. (If you make a par on 16, you’ve done better than Tom Watson did, or at least that’s what my caddie told me when I made a par. I intentionally didn’t check his accuracy.) For sure you’re going to enjoy the test regardless of your score.