![]() ![]() His tournament is less than two months from his first links tee time, with 111 rounds of golf to be played during which he must find the secret to golf. This time, his journey has a defined ending place on a hard time-certain deadline: a tee time in a qualifying tournament for The Open Championship. ![]() The book includes a dearth of pictures, which reinforces that it’s a story about much more than the golf courses. Though the logistical challenges of Scotland were different, I have to think that the task’s logistics always felt doable after Ireland. In some respects, this book is a follow-up to Tom’s bestseller, A Course Called Ireland, his story of walking the island of Ireland by traveling from one golf course to another. It’s quite another idea with Tom approaching his 40s, with a family and a career balanced against Robert, nostalgia, and ego pulling another direction. It’s one thing to daydream about an epic roadtrip of golfing Nirvana as a twentysomething with time to chase birdies and barflies. Therein begins the real drama of Tom’s story, his internal struggles with his desire to do the right thing when his head, his heart, and his soul are pulled in different directions, and whether Robert is well enough to make the journey. The journey around Scotland, as proposed, is a Devil-may-care fantasy proposed by one unburdened by the weight of responsibilities, untethered to any particular ambition except to hop from one 19th hole to the next, regaling new best friends with tales of the day’s golfer versus course battles. Robert dredges up a pub promise daydream they both had when they were younger men, which was to play all of the courses Open Championship. The story begins when Tom receives a phone call from his oldest and best friend., Robert. I had no idea what an emotionally wrenching journey that the book would set me upon while I was on my own trip of a lifetime. I had hoped to gain a little spiritual or strategic insight into the golf courses that I would be playing, or perhaps helpful tips about getting around and where to eat in St. The premise of the book was to memorialize Tom’s travails as he attempted to play every links course in Scotland (and the few true links courses in Wales and England, too, for good measure). I remember thinking, “what could possibly be better to read on the series of flights I would take to The Old Country?”Īs if I needed an even more personal connection to the story. I’d listened to Coyne interviewed on multiple golf podcasts during the promotional phase around the time the book was published and had hoped to read it one day, but life kept getting in the way.Īs fate would have it, the book would arrive at my house less than a week before two friends and I would be leaving for our own Scottish golf adventure. When I received my copy of A Course Called Scotland, I was incredibly excited to read it. However, that’s not the story or the book I read, or more accurately, not the book that I experienced. It’s a pleasant enough hook to garner the interest of any golfer. The author’s ambition is a hope of unlocking the secrets of the game of golf, and a dream of qualifying for the Open Championship. Ostensibly, A Course Called Scotland is a first-person narrative travel journal of a man’s golf quest to play all of the golf links on Great Britain. You live on every next word because you find your life on every next word. When the story evokes questions, fears, joys, doubts, gratitude, and regret that you have experienced, you find the line between entertainment and self-examination three steps behind you. ![]() This book surprised me, not by the content, but by the internal journey it made me take as I read it. ![]()
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