After 7 weeks of European golf, this hole stands above the rest

I was sick during last month’s Open at Royal Troon, but on the Wednesday before the Championship, I felt a burst of energy as we pulled into the parking lot at Prestwick Golf Club. All 500 yards and a detached caravan park the host of the Open this year and Prestwick, the original Open host.

When you visit one course, don’t miss another. That’s the point. So despite low sleep, low fluids, low everything, we set out to play it around Prestwick and were delighted by the entirety of it. But there’s one hole that stood out above the rest – and even today, seven weeks after my first trip across the Atlantic, it’s the golf experience I can’t stop thinking about.

My partner, James Colgan, and I cruised together for 14 windy holes, winning our pars and forgetting our pars, when a member and his son played behind us. Normally, at this point in a round, I would leave the company. We were four holes away from the clubhouse. They would just slow down our drive to dinner. But you are allowed to ignore new play partners only when you are at home. When you are in someone else’s home, you say yes to vegetables … and ask for seconds. It helps that playing alongside a member at a classic course like Prestwick is often like adding a free caddy. Ours doubled as a quasi-historian.

They joined us in the 15th set, which puts you right next to the clubhouse. You can hear the sea, of course. And you can see the first and 18th holes, and the commuter trains that go by. You can imagine the 1868 Open going down on this part of the grounds, old Tom Morris rooting on Young Tom. But beyond all that, there’s not much to glean from the 15th tee. All you know is that it’s 353 yards, and it literally earns its name: The bottlenecks.

At first blush, the 15th at Prestwick feels like a lot of Scottish golf. It is slightly uphill and surrounded by fescue covered dunes. There is a bunker on the left that serves as a mental bumper. Don’t go there. It’s just that it’s just off your target line, according to the yardage book. If you can get it 180 yards up the hill, our player told us, that bunker is out of sight, out of mind. But more importantly, apart from that trap, there isn’t much to the visual borders, which is unpleasant. There are a number of shots at Prestwick. There are a number of blind tee shots throughout Scotland. You can’t have all the waves of dirt links and coastal dunes without losing track of the fairway every now and then. (Brooks Koepka probably wouldn’t like Prestwick. He’s not a big fan of the blind shot.)

Playing into the prevailing wind, we were instructed to hit a shot 215 yards, down the gut. There’s room for a draw and there’s room for a cut, but there’s no room for a stroke and not even a slice. Standing on top of the 15th feels a bit like sitting on top of a narrow black diamond ski slope. You must move forward safely, but the obvious path seems too difficult to accomplish. But what you don’t realize until you reach the top of the hill is that a surprising group of tycoons await you.

Beyond the left fairway bunker is a hollow that collects many balls hitting the fairway. It’s a comforting spot, sheltered from the wind by the dunes, but it makes the approach mostly blind. To the right is a platform of short grass about 30 yards long and 20 yards wide. This is where you are trying to go. Kind of green-before-green. So we’ll ask – how many greens do you hit from 210 yards? Not much, even for golfers.

But part of what makes this hole great is just that—it’s essentially back-to-back par-3s. A long one (210 yards) followed by a short one (125). And there’s a long first green bunker that makes a par impossible, and bunkers short of the actual green that make life difficult from the fairway. For the player who can’t keep a driver on the planet, it’s fantastic! You wouldn’t want a driver. Or 3-wood. Or 5-wood. The 4-iron or some kind of hybrid is the right play, which can always lull us into a sense of comfort. Die-hard players opting for something longer will find a fairway valley winding its way to the green, but at just 15 yards wide, it’s hardly worth a thought.

From green-to-green, you can see the actual green, which banks strongly from left to right. So much so that most of its left side is completely useless for hole location, but vital to getting your ball closer to the hole. It plays a bit like a redan, where you’re aiming away from the hole to get closer. Walking straight into it will only lead to your ball going over, a fact this 7-handicap found out too late.

Coming back for a two-shot bogey, I had no one else to blame. Our player told me to trust his line. After I ignored him, his son stepped up and hit the shot I didn’t, a quick reminder that I was nothing more than a Prestwick novice and that the 15th is the final back hole. Where the view from wherever your ball ends up is the illuminated view. At The Narrows – like many links golf – you’re thinking about how far you hit it, how short you can hit it, how far left and how far right you’re going to hit it, with trajectory and wind as the final ingredients – the combination of which is only revealed once you’ve played it. .

I spent the better part of the next two months traipsing through Europe before recently returning to the American Midwest, wishing I could play the Narrows one more time. And to do it tomorrow. If this hole were in northern Missouri, its green would be too soft, battered by summer storms. If it were in Scottsdale, it would feel even more claustrophobic, with cacti and all manner of dried vegetation around. If it were in Florida, it would be a revelation. But your ball wouldn’t go along the pitch like it does on the west coast of Scotland.

That may be my favorite part of The Narrows. It feels like it could exist anywhere, but it can’t.

Only here, an extremely long way from home.

Have you ever played the 15th at Prestwick? Feel free to share your thoughts on that hole or your favorite with the author at sean.zak@golf.com.