Henry Mellen Can Check Off  “Playing Golf in Scotland” from His Bucket List

The “bucket list,” don’t we all have one in some form or another -- those things that we want to do before we’re too old or infirmed, before we, well, “kick the bucket”?

No. 1 on Henry Mellen’s bucket list was “Playing Golf in Scotland,” where the ancient sport was born.

Henry is a Birmingham, Alabama native and die-hard Auburn alum who is personable and friendly.

His Southern accent is gentlemanly, and with such an extraordinary resonating inflection that he could be a star in the voice-over industry should he ever decide to leave his successful business insurance firm.

For many years Henry and long-time close friends and fellow golfers, Joe Bynum, Jimmy Johnson, and John Scott have met every Wednesday morning for a down home breakfast at Demetri’s Bar B Q restaurant in Birmingham.

It was on one of those Wednesday mornings earlier this year that the subject of playing golf in Scotland came up.

“Going to Scotland to play was something on my bucket list, something I’d always wanted to do,” says Henry.  “If you play golf or if you’re a student of the game, you know that this is where it all started, and it’s something you just want to do.”

Joe Bynum was also feeling a strong “it’s now or never” urge to make the pilgrimage to golf’s sacred grounds.

Even though John and Jimmy had already been, they felt that the prospect of all four good friends sharing the experience together would be well worth a return trip.

“They are such a great group of old friends so I was very excited for Henry to have this opportunity, and was supportive and encouraging,” says Henry’s wife, Mary.

It wasn’t just idle breakfast chitchat because soon thereafter they were in contact with Grantland Rice II, who has been organizing golf packages to Scotland and Ireland for almost 20 years.

This past May the four friends flew to Edinburgh, Scotland, where they rented a car and drove an hour and a half to golf’s most hallowed grounds, the Old Course at St. Andrews.

The guys made a memorable entrance at the Old Course and the other prestigious country clubs they visited in Scotland.

Remember the music from the “Beverly Hillbillies”?  Well, play that in your head as you read John Scott’s telling of the rental car fiasco:

We expressly reserved a large van for transportation to carry all four bags, and other stuff.  I get to the rental car place in Edinburgh and they have none and can only give us a Volvo station wagon.

We couldn’t get all our stuff in the car.  So we had to stuff it in, Henry rides on the “hump” without seat belt and then rope it all on top (borrowed rope from the caddy shack)…

We looked like the “Clampetts” going to the big city for the first time or some junk dealers with most of our bags roped on top of the car. But we made it and it was quite an experience.”

How old is golf? Some golf historians contend that the game was being played at St. Andrews almost 100 years before Columbus arrived in America, and some 180 years before Shakespeare began penning his sonnets.

The Old Course at St. Andrews is set against the broom and bracken that line the towering craggy cliffs of the North Sea.  It is magnificent and melancholy.  The crashing surf below, seagulls circling above, and ever-changing tapestry of misty gray and bonnie blue sky compose the heartbreaking beauty of this ancient place.

Joe Bynum described his feelings as he stepped onto the Old Course.  “You’re especially kind of awestruck by virtue of just being there.  The Old Course rotates with the British Open.  Being where I watched the pros play on TV since I was a child --  it was just a spiritual moment.”

The May weather at St. Andrews, Kingdom of Fife, on the east coast of Scotland, is usually shrouded in rain.  However, it pulled back its gray cloak to expose sunny skies throughout their weeklong stay.

Another favorable factor for play was the long light of the Scottish evenings that allowed them to play until 9:30 at night the first two days.  The only drawback was finding a place to eat dinner that late.

However, after encountering several “closed” signs, they came upon the popular Dunvegan Hotel & Bar still open for supper.

Grilling steaks on the porch, hosts Jack Willoughby, a 4th generation Texan, and his Scottish wife, Sheena, greeted the hungry foursome with a warm, hearty welcome.

“The food was great,” says Henry. “So was the atmosphere.  Lots of golf and Texas A & M memorabilia.  A great place to end the day.”

Henry’s dry sense of humor and willingness to poke a little fun at his golf game is both painfully honest and endearing.

He begins by describing what it’s like to play the famous Old Course where battle immediately erupted between Henry and the fierce Scottish foliage:

You’ve got the fairway and from the fairway you have rough, and their rough is a little different.  Most of the rough you have here in America you play out of – the rough they have is tall and dense.

It looks like straw and you get into it and it’s almost like you have to take a front-end loader to get out of it.  So once you get in the rough you’re almost doomed to have a high score on the hole.

You’re got rough and then you’ve also got this “gorse.”  It’s a yellow bush and it’s beautiful but it’s a dense, thorny bush.  If you get too far off the fairway and you get into it, you’re in jail.  I mean you don’t get out of it.  For a double-digit handicap golfer like me, it’s death on the hole.

There are no trees.  The wind from the North Sea is constantly blowing.  It’s either in your face or at your back.  Of course at your back, the ball goes further, and if it’s in your face, you might have to use a 4 iron if the shot were a 7 iron because it is blowing so hard!

Here we call them sand traps, in Scotland they’re called “bunkers.” Most of the bunkers are deep and ominous and have names like the Coffins, Hell Bunker, and the Valley of Sin. There are 112 bunkers in the Old Course.

Henry describes these monsters:

The sand traps over here are nothing like over there.  It’s just like somebody dug a round hole four feet down.  If your ball gets in there you may be limited as to how you get out of it because you may be up against the bunker wall which means you can’t hit the ball.

You can be a foot back from the wall which can be 6’ high so you can’t get a wedge up the quick.  So what happens is that you have to hit it out sideways.  So it can be a real challenge.  It’s especially hard to get play out of when you’re a double-digit handicap!

Jimmy Johnson’s ball suddenly evaporates in the mist at the Old Course and causes consternation about Celtic magic – or “something.”

Henry says it was a baffling experience and tells this story:

Jimmy hit the ball hard and we all heard it.  A good, solid hit.  Everybody looked up but it wasn’t there.  We all turned in circles looking for that ball.  Nothing.  It was supposed to fly over a bunker.

The caddies couldn’t find it.  We couldn’t find it.  It just didn’t make sense – we all knew he hit it but it just disappeared.  We all looked everywhere.

We started making jokes that “something” took it. It was a good while but finally somebody saw it stuck deep in the side of the bunker. We had a lot of laughs about it the whole trip.

So, at this point one might ask if it’s possible to “enjoy” playing the Old Course?

There are those who curse, throw clubs, or just walk off never to return to the Old Course.

However, these four Alabama guys had not only the mettle to persevere but also the right kind of attitude to address the obstacles of the Old Course.

Perhaps part of their inspiration came from the uncle of their travel guide, the famous American sports writer and poet, Grantland Rice (1880-1954), who said it best in one of his most quoted poems, “Football Alumnus”

They played the Old Course to pay homage. They stayed the course good-naturedly because of where they were. They played to enjoy it.  And indeed, they thoroughly enjoyed it.

Henry also offers this wise advice, “You have to sort of disconnect yourself from the play versus where you are playing and the history behind it.  And, you’ve got to have a caddy!”

Joe agrees and describes how having a caddy was pivotal to playing the Old Course:

You had to have a caddy to help you find your ball!   They tell you where you should try to hit your shot – and on the Old Course you were hitting blind.

Sometimes off the tee there are bunkers in the middle of the fairway that you can’t see.  So you have a caddy who’s gotten a feel for your game.  He’s gonna say, “Hit it here.  Here’s your line.”  And you just have to trust him.

Henry was particularly impressed with these steely old Scots and found them to be a rare and interesting breed of men and gives this description:

They were part of the equation, the caddies.  These guys made the trip, too.  There were some characters and they have some great stories.

These guys spend 4, 5, or 6 hours carrying a bag.  Then some go to a local pub. One old guy, he was about 74, stays at the pub til mid-night. Walks home.  He comes back to the course at 6 in the morning, and does the same thing every day of the week.  He was a great talker.

But this is what they do for a living.  They’re called “loopers” and caddying there is called “looping.”   The younger guys were a real pleasure but the older guys were the ones who had all of the great stories.

Henry and his buddies used St. Andrews as their hub, staying in a hotel there, and made trips to some fantastic courses.

They played what many call the “tricky” Jubilee Course at St. Andrews.

It has its share of horrendous gorse, demonic bunkers, as well as the constant wind for sure, but because it lies within a particularly narrow parcel of ground there are also other unique, “tricky,” aspects to circumvent.

Set against the everlasting glory of towering cathedral cliffs and the crashing North Sea, the Kingsbarns Golf Links Course is a stunning vision.

Every hole is in sight of the sea.  It is easy to imagine that you hear the haunting melancholy of bagpipes floating in on the wind and whining softly through the heather.

“It’s breathtakingly beautiful!” Henry exclaims.  “It is one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever seen in my life.”

Joe recalls, “The most significant difficulty at Kingsbarns is the really high winds.  The high elevation there magnifies the wind. It’s a great course though.”

Kingsbarns holds the 20th spot in Golf Digest Magazine’s list of top 100 golf courses outside the United States.

They also played the newest course in St. Andrews, the Castle Course, which overlooks the castle side of the historic town.  Although the scenery is incredible, the severely sloped greens presented substantial difficulties.

“This one wasn’t very user friend,” declares Henry.  “It was pretty severe, tough golf.”

It’s a pleasant drive from St. Andrews to play the famous Muirfield course, often said to be the ideal course for the golf perfectionist.

“This is one of the courses that rotates with the British Open,” Henry explains.

Dating back to 1744, Muirfield is the home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the world’s oldest golf club, where the original 13 Rules of Golf were written.

The majesty of the North Sea and lush green fairways rippling alongside rises of wind rattling trees and swaying straw and emerald grasses, makes Muirfield a truly captivating sight.

Henry recalls their visit to Muirfield’s courtly clubhouse.  “When we got through playing in the morning, we put on coats and ties and went into the clubhouse to eat lunch.  It was very aristocratic with deep paneled walls and paintings of old golf legends.  We all enjoyed the experience.”

Almost next door to Muirfield, the last course they played was the Renaissance Club that opened in April, 2008.  Strategically designed for tournament golf, with naturally windswept dunes, its 300 acres of pine forest has been sculpted into an aesthetically pleasing landscape.

John Scott recalls, “Renaissance was a great stop in that the course was much more similar to what we play at home…  It is also very new so it was a great experience.”

Asked if he would make the trip again, Henry laughs and says:

My golf is so bad that I would have to improve to go again!

Anytime I three putted on a green I thought I had accomplished something because it was four putts and five putts which is pretty uncommon over here.

The only highlight of my golf in Scotland is that I finished.  Other than that, it was pretty ugly, he moans.

As for Henry’s bucket list--  it only took a second to make a checkmark after No. 1, but the memories will last a lifetime.

Playing golf in Scotland where this old great game was born, can only be topped by one thing, and that’s sharing the adventure with great friends.

“I’ve been to the mountaintop as far as golf,” sighs Henry.  “But being there with close friends who also love the game made this an unforgettable experience for all of us.”