We played the Old Course backwards. It was… interesting!

There is very little in golf that Tiger Woods hasn’t done.

He’s won every event that matters – multiple times, no less – banked millions and played all of the world’s top golf courses.

He has, to all intents and purposes, completed it, mate.

The number one item left on his bucket list? Playing the Old Course backwards. Or, more accurately, in its original form.

As far back as the 1400s, the course was designed to be played either clockwise or anti-clockwise. It wasn’t until 1870 that Old Tom Morris introduced the current first green by splitting it from the 17th that the anti-clockwise routing became the standard.

Still, the course can still be played in the opposite direction and Woods, the scholar of the game that he is, knows all about it.

Ahead of the 2015 Open Championship in St Andrews, he said: “Obviously it’s the home of golf, we all know that. But to me it’s brilliant how you can play it so many different ways. I’ve always wanted to play it backwards, one time before I die. I want to play from one to 17, two to 16, and so on and so forth.

“I think that would be just a blast because I can see how certain bunkers – why would they put that there? And then if you play it backwards, you see it. It’s very apparent. That’s totally in play. That one day would be a lot of fun to be able to do.”

Whilst the wait for Woods goes on, for two of the bunkered team – Michael McEwan and James Tait – that opportunity knocked on April 1 this year. And yes, they’d have been fools to turn it down.

Here’s how they got on…

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BACK TO THE START

JT: I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve played the Old Course. Honestly, I don’t have enough fingers and toes to keep track of it.
I even played it on Christmas Day last year. That’s just a perk of growing up in St Andrews, I guess. But I’d never played it in reverse before. It was something that had always been a bit of a dream of mine but the opportunity had never come up. My dad did it a while back and raved about it but I’d never had the privilege.

MM: I obviously haven’t played there as much as James. If memory serves, I had played it three times before. The first was on Valentine’s Day in 2014 with three bunkered competition winners. I then played in the media days for the 2015 and 2022 Opens. It’s always special. I’m lucky, I’ve played many of the world’s best courses but the feeling you get when you stand on the first tee of the Old and shove a tee peg in the ground is unique. Nerves, nostalgia and anticipation smack you right between the eyes. There’s nothing like it.

JT: It’s funny, the first hole is one of the easiest tee shots in the game.

MM: Yeah, if you don’t think too much about where you’re playing and the fact that everybody who has ever done anything in the game has played there before you!

JT: Well, yeah, but you’ve got one of the widest fairways in golf to aim at. I mean, it’s more than 100 yards wide and the green is right there in front of you. You can pretty much hit it anywhere so long as you get the ball going forwards. But it’s not like that on the reverse routing.

MM: Very true. I think I’m right in saying that, playing it the ‘normal’ way, the first hole is SI 10 but, reversed, it’s SI 1. I still took the same line as I would if we’d been playing it normally, aiming just to the right of the Swilcan Bridge, because I wanted to give myself the shortest number possible for my second shot but there’s no sugar-coating it – whichever way you play it, it’s one of the hardest second shots you’ll ever face. The road encroaches all the way up the left, the Road Hole bunker lies in wait on the right, and all you’ve got is about a 20-yard window to thread your ball between.

JT: And that’s to say nothing of the fact we played it in a 40mph wind!

MM: Good point!

JT: It’s a brute of a start, no doubt about it.

MM: And you walk over the bridge on your first hole of the day instead of the last, which is a little funny.

GOING OUT

JT: You know how everybody says ‘left is best and right is shite’ on the Old Course? In reverse, it’s the opposite. If you’re a right-hander, it’s better to have a slice than a hook, particularly on those first few holes where you’ve got out of bounds all up the left.

MM: Agreed. I’ve been battling a slice with my driver for a while now – a combination of bad technique and not playing enough – but you have to be really wild with it to bring the out-of-bounds into play. My bigger concern was tumbling into one of the bunkers.

JT: Didn’t you almost stack it on the third?

MM: Listen, in my defence, you can’t see them until you’re in them! But yes, I was walking up the third – the ‘real’ 16th – and I was fiddling with the speed settings on my electric trolley, not really looking where I was going, when, all a sudden, the front wheel nosedived into what turned out to be Grant’s bunker.

JT: You absolute donut.

MM: I managed to recover the situation, though! I heaved it back up the face, with the wheels spinning the opposite way, before anybody noticed.

JT: The greenkeepers might have!

MM: True, apologies for any lasting damage done.

JT: Seriously, though, some of the bunkering makes a lot more sense when you play the course backwards. The seventh is a good example. It plays from the 13th tee back along the 12th fairway to the 11th green. It brings the Admiral’s bunker, in particular, bang into play, whilst having the Hill bunker right in front of a seriously elevated green makes it a pretty daunting approach.

MM: How good is the eighth?

JT: Oh my God. Incredible, especially into a four-club wind or whatever it was.

MM: Yeah, that’s the funny thing about playing in reverse: the two par-3s are still eight and 11. The eighth is a beauty. You tee off from the normal 12th tee, playing away from the estuary towards the tenth green. The scorecard says it’s 187 yards but it was playing easily 230 or 240 the day we were there.

JT: Yeah, brilliant hole. I liked the ninth, too. Playing diagonally instead of straight down – a bit like the first and 18th – made it a lot more interesting.

MM: Yeah, strategic.

JT: Tell you what, I was ready for the ginger beer at the turn.

MM: The ginger beer! I’d forgotten all about that! Genuinely, it’s not my favourite thing to drink but it was absolutely top drawer. Fentiman’s Classic Ginger Beer, I think it was, with a little wedge of lime. That’ll warm you right up.

COMING HOME

MM: Can I be totally honest here? I found the back nine a little strange.

JT: In what way?

MM: It just didn’t feel like it set up quite as well for playing backwards as the front. Like, the 12th. So, it plays from the eighth tee to the sixth green but you couldn’t really see the flag because there was a huge gorse bush in the way.

JT: Yeah, there were definitely more blind shots coming in than going out. And presumably that gorse bush you’re talking about wouldn’t have been there on the original routing back in Old Tom’s day but you can’t just take it out for one day and stick it back in the next.

MM: Exactly. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means. There are still a bunch of really good holes and I defy anybody not to feel a tingle as all those famous landmarks, like Hamilton Grand, the Old Course Hotel and so on, get closer and closer. It’s still St Andrews and it’s always special.

JT: It was about midway through the back nine that the weather properly turned on us. It had been windy and cold the whole way until then, but then the heavens opened and it became a tough old walk.

MM: I thought you did well to resist going full tilt with your driver.

JT: See, that’s the thing, I don’t use my driver all that often on the Old Course.

MM: Because you’re just so massive?

JT: Ha! Well, kind of. It’s just that it’s not a particularly long course. It’s 6,269 in reverse? All but one of the par-4s is under 400 yards and there are a couple of holes that are either just above or just under 300 yards, so you don’t need to be smashing driver all over the place. Plus, there’s a few fairways when you can run out and the margin for error is pretty slim. If you mishit it, you can end up in a bit of bother. So, I generally find that just playing a bit more within myself and hitting more irons off the tee leads to better scores.

MM: So, talk me through the 16th.

JT: I knew that was coming.

MM: Go on…

JT: So, yeah. I decided to be Billy Big Bollocks and smash a 3-iron. It was only 307 yards to the green, with the wind helping a little, so I figured I could get there.

MM: And did you?

JT: No, I topped it into a bush!

MM: It was very funny and, to be completely fair, you then launched a drive through the back of the green with your second ball.

JT: Yeah, 50 yards through the back and into a bunker on the 17th. Or the second, as it was for us.

MM: Eighteen was good, wasn’t it?

JT: Playing across the hole from the second tee definitely isn’t as intimidating as it is normally where you know that if you just come off it slightly, you’ve got a whole row of cars in play. But it was a lot of fun.

FAVOURITE HOLE

MM: I’d probably say the seventh. As you said earlier, the fairway bunkers make a lot more sense in reverse, and it’s just a lot of fun. Some people think the 12th is the weakest hole on the Old Course – which I don’t agree with, by the way – but I’d like them to play it backwards. I think they’d at least understand it better if they did.

JT: I liked the eighth, and not just because I hit my best shot of the day there. It had a bit of drama about it with the estuary behind you, the wind blowing. It was solid.

IN SUMMARY

MM: Brilliant from start to finish. It’s strange because it’s still the Old Course but, by the same token, it felt like a different golf course.

JT: Totally agree. It’s superb fun.

MM: Okay, so let’s say you can only play the Old Course once more and never again. How would you play it: the ‘modern’ way or in reverse?

JT: Probably the way we play it these days, purely because I’ve got so many good memories growing up and winning competitions on it and so on. But I love the fact I’ve now played it in reverse. That’s pretty special and I’ve definitely got a much better appreciation of it now. But I’d like to keep it special. Once is good enough for me.

MM: Of the four ‘nines’ you could play – the normal two and the reverse two – my favourite is actually the front nine in reverse. It was a lot of fun and I liked being bamboozled by it. The only disappointment for me was having the Swilcan Bridge on the first hole rather than the last. That’s a moment you look forward to the whole round and, without it, the last hole felt like it was missing something. But it was a total privilege. I can’t imagine there are many people who’ve played the Old Course backwards and Augusta National…

JT: Couldn’t resist, could you?

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For more ‘St Andrews Reversed’ content, watch the vlog we filmed on the day and listen to the special bonus episode of The bunkered Podcast we recorded, too. Click here or search for “What it’s like to play the Old Course backwards!” wherever you get your podcasts.