The Golf Club

Keith McLaren - aka 'The Kilted Caddie' - has moved to St Andrews and is in need of a good club to join. Not too difficult a task, you might think … after all, this is the Home of Golf. But is it so?

The famous Hell Bunker on the 14th hole of the Old Course

St Andrews has unfortunately seen the influx of chain restaurants too: Nardinis, Prezzos and Toni Macaronis. Sorry but I don’t like Toni Macaronis.

No, give me the nineteenth hole of a decent golf club any day – a hot shower, a game of dominos, a frame of snooker, a cheap pint and a decent meal; that’s what I’m looking for.

A good and well-run club is very important and potentially life-saving (well, at least marriage-saving). For it is an antidote to the sometimes purgatorial game of golf. Yes, the angst and frustration and self-loathing that is commonplace in a round simply pale at the nineteenth in a good club, amidst the glow of camaraderie and the marvellous workings of ethanol.

So it’s the marvellous St Andrews Golf Club for me, I hope. Now, who are the two ‘friends’ who are going to put me up?

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