Castle needs to earn its keep

Scotland on Sunday, 28 June 2008

Standing on the tee, I had no idea where to go. If not for the fact that one of my companions had played there before and so could offer advice, the line to take on the first hole of the Castle Course at St Andrews would have been reduced to a guessing game. Then again, the same can be said of the second, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the ninth, the 12th, the 14th, the 15th, the 16th and the 18th.

Which is not to say that blind or semi-blind holes do not have a place in the game; they do, their cloaked presence introducing an appropriate and occasional touch of tension to the sometimes-mundane task of hitting fairway or green. But, on the basis that too much of anything is never that good in the realm of course architecture, it must be said up front that this much-ballyhooed addition to the Home of Golf's portfolio is ultimately disappointing.

It is also very difficult. Quite apart from the air of mystery surrounding the final resting places of so many tee-shots, the most striking aspect of this picturesque layout high above the Auld Grey Toon becomes apparent once the golfer is lucky enough to have found his ball after driving into seeming oblivion. The architect, David McLay Kidd, calls them 'spill-offs'; my four-ball came up with a few other names - some of them printable - for the peculiar rough-covered mounds we discovered dotted indiscriminately about the fairways.

'Hairy mound' was the first, albeit rather prosaic offering. I myself favoured 'clumpy hillock'. Then there was 'Abe Lincoln chins'. But the most imaginative member of the group came up with 'enormous hoof-prints left by enormous horses'.

Whatever, these mysterious affectations - for they appear to have no immediately discernible architectural or strategic purpose - are intensely irritating. While golf, as someone once said, is a game never meant to be fair, searching for one's ball after striping one up the middle very quickly gets old. The always-tricky-to-locate line between luck and skill has been crossed here and crossed too often.

"Our aim was to create this wild, tumbling landscape that could have been the result of nature," says Paul Kimber, Kidd's right-hand man, by way of explanation. "Then we found places to play golf amongst it. That was the look we were trying to achieve. Also, with the site being so exposed, we had to have some width. But that width can seem a bit bland by itself, so we broke up the fairways with the ragged shapes - think of them as a frozen, three-dimensional wave formed by the wind - that hopefully give the course an authentic and natural look."

Hmmm. Whatever Kimber likes to think, it is hard to imagine too many of these weird and wonderful creations surviving more than a few months of steady complaints from paying customers. Let's hope the demise of at least the most obtrusive 'hoof-prints' comes sooner rather than later.

Sadly, the golfing goofiness does not stop with the sometimes time-consuming location of tee-shots. The greens on the Castle - which opened yesterday - are amongst the most wildly undulating anywhere. The upside is that, once on the elusive surfaces, putting is a lot of fun for those blessed with a modicum of touch and a bit of imagination; the downside is that, so severe are some of the slopes, actually finding the greens with anything more than a pitch is often more than tricky. More than once our group watched in amusement/bemusement as a seemingly perfect approach shot was swept off into some distant hollow.

Given that the average 18-20 handicapper is a bogey-shooter because his level of expertise gets steadily worse the closer he gets to the hole - not many are short-game wizards - this aspect of the Castle is worrying.

Even with the greens running at a relatively benign 8.5-9.0 on the 'Stimpmeter', the less proficient are surely condemned to use their putters in excess of 40 times over the course of their rounds. As a consequence, their scores are inevitably and depressingly headed into the low three-figures. How much fun this can ever be for anyone is, of course, debatable, never mind the obvious funereal implications for the pace of play.

According to the St Andrews Links Trust, the target time for 18 holes is an ambitious four hours and 14 minutes (a round on the Old Course is supposed to be completed in three hours 57 minutes). But that seems unlikely at best. Look for what the brochure calls a "challenging and enjoyable experience" to take at least an hour more than that.

"This course was never designed for medal play," points out Kimber in mitigation. "Match play is what amateur golf is all about and the Castle course is for amateurs having fun. It's not about professionals shooting low scores.

"I would acknowledge that the target areas for the good player are generally small, but the areas short and right of most greens - where most high-handicappers tend to miss - are relatively easy and accessible."

Where that is not true is on the 17th hole, a spectacularly memorable par-3 across a gaping cliff-top chasm to a green that, like so many others, was apparently designed by someone under the influence of strong hallucinogenic drugs. While this so-called 'signature hole' (ugh) is certainly fun to play, it is no coincidence that the drop zone to the left of the tee is already covered in an Astroturf mat, so busy is it likely to be.

Given all of the above, whether the Castle can maintain a level of business justifying the reported £12m outlay remains to be seen. The danger would seem to be that, having shelled out the £120 green fee and been robbed of, say, half a dozen balls, the typical client will be disinclined to come back too often. Admittedly having sampled the Castle's eccentric delights just the once, I'm afraid that is the conclusion reached here.