This Scottish stunner was my favorite course I played this year

I wish I could live more days like this summer when I played Ailsa course at Trump Turnberry for the first time. When I think about it now, inspired by the sunset photos on my phone, I remember the innocence (and ignorance) I felt, mostly because I had no idea a Covid diagnosis was coming.

When you go through Scotland on a whim, everyone tells you to take a hay fever tablet. Agh is johst pohlen is goht ya. But in my case, no tablet would save me. A real fever set in very quickly. I only had a few more hours of normalcy.

That’s why they were so well spent on one of the world’s greatest golf courses. Ailsa is best known as the place where Stewart Cink made (but really broke) golf history, beating the 59-year-old. Tom Watson in a playoff for the 2009 Open Championship. It was impossible not to think about it while on the grounds, especially as many of the Open at Troon competitors were scouring the Ayrshire coast for a shot around Turnberry.

Scottie Scheffler, Adam Scott and Sam Burns were all out over the weekend. Luke Donald had hidden just a few sets ahead of us. I wondered if (and even hoped that) the itinerary would allow us to cross paths with the European Ryder Cup captain. Keegan Bradley it had just been announced as the USA captain, and I knew Luke had some thoughts.

But that was when Turnberry took over and I soon forgot that Donald was ahead of us. Massive dunes, gullies and heather will do just that, acting as boundary bumpers for your golf ball but also focusing your attention. You climb on top of them to hit balls and play on greens cut into them. There’s a lot to love about these top courses – Cruden Bay is another – as the way home is always very clear. If you play smart – unlike the American tree park course – here you will always see your ball down. You might not find it in fescue, but at least you know where to look (and where to drop a drop).

There are plenty of Turnberry hallmarks worth shouting about. The course really gets going on the par-3 4th, your first along the coast of the Irish Sea, when you start to appreciate the distant Isle of Arran. He hits harder on the 8th, 9th and 10th – a par-4, par-3, par-5 stretch that leads as close to the sea as possible. From the 9th is the iconic lighthouse and a coastline where we found locals enjoying the sunset.

Partly because of the prohibitive greens fee, you won’t find many people playing it every night at Turnberry. The price is too high – it’s coming four figures – but for us there was a silver lining. A foursome ahead of us were itching for a game, so they invited us to play them inside, from the 12th hole on, in a par six.

As a rule follower and former golf club employee myself, the proposition made me uncomfortable. But there was not a soul behind us and not a pushcart in the group. A maintenance worker drove by and told us the place was ours. It was backpacks as we battled clouds that began to mask the light.

This kind of scene stands out to many of us American golf writers because it feels so different from what we’re used to at home, and also because it seems to be repeating itself in Scotland. The windy afternoon calms down to a calm breeze as you play the 18th round at 9.49pm. The sky there seems forever ready to turn pink.

A similar atmosphere settled in 24 hours later when a colleague and I ran around Prestwick. You have no choice at that point but to forget your score and shoot mental images of your surroundings because it seems like a painting has been created around you and it will be a long time before you return. And that’s okay. After finishing our round with four pars, a birdie and my double boyfrienda sneeze came over me as we walked to our rental car. Covid had officially arrived, but I wasn’t going to let it spoil the mood.