Living the Green: Links and Scotland golf edition
When the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open and The Open are staged, it's a two-week long celebration of links golf. Pure links golf is a small but enduring segment of our game. It can only truly be played on sandy soil beside the sea. For those of us watching from home, it's a chance to remove manicured fairways and deep ball marks on the green in favor of yellow and brownish hues, grey skies, waterproofs and sea breeze.
Much of the golf media who cover The Open find a way to sneak in a few rounds of their own prior to reporting on the pros. In this edition of Living the Green, we've found the best posts from Instagram, Twitter and our reviews of links courses and others around Scotland.
Jay Coffin reviewed several courses prior to covering The Open for Golf Channel. Two of them were in East Lothian, including Renaissance Golf Club, designed by American architect Tom Doak:
The weather was good and bad at times, which made the round more of a challenge. But thankfully we had our trusty forecaddie Callum. He was great and probably saved 8-10 shots for me. The par 3s were great, especially the short sixth hole. Callum insisted it was Scotland's only 111-yard par-5. He wasn't too far off. I did think that the greens were overly difficult on purpose. They were fair, but they were just not easy to judge. And on this windy day, it often was a chore.
Meanwhile, Morning Drive's Damon Hack found some time to tee it up at Prestwick in between shows live from Royal Troon:
Chased the sunset at @PrestwickGC. Thanks, @prestwickgcpro! A glorious walk! #11tee @TheOpen pic.twitter.com/C8Yyxi5YFI
— Damon Hack (@damonhackGC) July 11, 2016