Prestwick Golf Club is just down the road from Royal Troon, host of the 2024 Open Championship. Courtesy It’s true that Royal Troon Golf Club is semi-private, which means visitors are granted access to a limited number of tee times at the historic links course, which next week plays host to the 152nd Open Championship . However, the club decidedly leans in the “private” direction, which is why avid golf travelers enthusiastically tee it up along the Firth of Clyde anytime they’re fortunate enough to secure entry onto those grounds.
Such stipulations help to explain how I found myself traversing those 18 holes in late March, still a few weeks before the golfing season formally began at the club. The mercury never rose past the upper 40s that day, while a stiff wind rushed in off the ocean, adding an extra chill to the air. The stout, three-club wind was a welcomed assist on the rare instances when those gusts blew at my back, but when the course’s routing turned me into the fan, short par-4s played as if they stretched 100 extra yards, while longer holes were even more imposing.
The shortest hole on the course — the shortest hole in all of Open Championship golf — was prominently affected, too. It was there on the 123-yard 8th hole, a par-3 famously known by a nickname bestowed by Willie Park Jr., in 1909, that I faced a stout headwind.
Staring down the infamously narrow, “ Postage Stamp ” green — a putting surface less than 2,700 square feet in area and on.