My love of links golf began long before I started playing the game.
It began with a love of the sea, and with the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland. I have always been fascinated by their wild coastlines, rolling dunes and open horizons. Long before I ever held a golf club, I was drawn to the way links courses seemed to belong to these landscapes. They did not look like parks with fairways cut through them. They seemed to have been there all along, shaped by the land, the wind and the sea.
When I eventually started playing golf, that fascination took on a completely different meaning.
My first truly intense experience of links golf came at Brora. At the time, I had no idea that I was about to become a links golf addict. I simply loved the feeling of being out there, with the dunes, the rough, the sea and the wind all becoming part of the game.
A little later came my first round at Royal Dornoch. By then, I was already beginning to understand what links golf could be. At Dornoch, I was completely lost to it.
What keeps drawing me back is the unpredictability. A links course is never quite the same from one round to the next. Wind can change the character of a hole within minutes. Firm ground invites a different approach from soft turf. A dune can hide a fairway, a hollow can offer an unexpected route, and sometimes the best shot is the one you never imagined playing.
Every round feels slightly different because the conditions are constantly changing.
I would never claim that links golf is the only golf worth playing. There are wonderful courses in every kind of landscape, and I enjoy discovering them too. But whenever I have the choice, I tend to head for the coast.
Perhaps because, for me, links golf is where the game feels most closely connected to the places that first made me fall in love with Scotland and Ireland.
And if the wind happens to carry one of my shots gently towards the sea, I am happy to watch it sail away.
