North Berwick is a golf Mecca. The course is magnificent; one of the oldest and most replicated designs in the world and an Open Championship Final Qualifying venue. When playing North Berwick, the biggest danger to fast play is the mesmerising sight of the Bass Rock looming out in the Firth of Forth. It is the twin of Ailsa Craig; visible from Troon and Turnberry over on the Firth of Clyde and just as hypnotic. Nearer to land, and almost as striking, is Craigleith Island.
The legendary “Redan”, the par-three fifteenth, may be the most influential short hole design around. It has given its name to a distinctive angled green design which slopes away from the player. Perhaps the most famous “copy” of this is the seventh at Shinnecock Hills, infamous for the mayhem it caused at the US Open in 2004. It is no accident that Shinnecock was largely designed by Willie Dunn … who was born and bred in North Berwick.
Born William Law Anderson in North Berwick on October 21 1879, Willie was one of six children born to Thomas and Jessie Anderson, and spent his childhood roaming the links that were the heart of the town. It’s easy to imagine a burly child in 1893, carrying his father’s clubs under his arm while impatiently awaiting his chance to take a swing at one of the remarkably expensive gutta-percha golf balls of the day. One-fifth the cost of the old Featherie, and still costing the equivalent of three dozen balls today, it’s no wonder the premium was on accuracy back then!
His father Tom, appointed North Berwick’s first “keeper of the greens” and a great player himself, knew the boy could play and gave him the chance often, but would despair that it was taking too long for the “bairn to balance”: the unfortunate young Willie looked like two separate people welded together. His upper body was that of a squat weightlifter, his lower that of a tall leggy dancer.
But Tom needn’t have worried. In time, the combination of Willie’s balance and speed, together with his upper body strength, would make him one of the greatest golfers of all time. Not until Sam Snead, who had a high kick Bruce Lee would have envied, would another “unbalanced bairn” make such an impact.
