Muirfield 101 - Czabe Style

Last August me and 7 other knuckleheads made a pilgrammage to the "old sod."

Scotland.

Ancestral home of golf.

It was, without qualification, awesome.

Here was the "raw" video of our tour of Muirfield, site of this year's Open Championship. People always ask me: "So, how was it? Was it as great a layout as everyone says."

My answer is basically "yes" but with a caveat. I played like shit that day. Just couldn't put the ball reliably in play, and as such it wasn't much fun. As you can see from the video, the rough was INSANE. Deep enough to lose your sheep.

And since that part of Scotland had been enjoying a very wet summer, the course was un-naturally green. In fact, it played almost like a very nicely manicured American-style "farmland" course - with pot bunkers.

This is not how Muirfield is supposed to play. There was no hump and bump, bounce and roll. So we sorta got "cheated" in that regard to the conditions. On a positive note, a tough day would have been rendered miserable if the place was firm and fast.

Plus, it was relatively warm, almost a touch humid. And believe me, I didn't feel cheated at all by not getting a brutal Scottish summer storm like they did in 2002 at The Open.

The club has a reputation of being very snooty, and tough to get on and play. But our group packager made sure to line our trip up to take advantage of the one day of the week (Tuesday) they allow tourist play. We had the option to play 36 at the club, where in the morning you play your own ball and after lunch in the clubhouse (MANDATORY coat and tie! fuggetaboutit!) you go back out for a "brisk" 2-ball (alternate shot).

We said "no thanks" to that, and re-routed down the road about 25 minutes to play North Berwyk - an utterly phenemonal place that is under-the-Scotland-radar for most Americans.

In all, I thought Muirfield was utterly sweet. I would have loved to have played better. And seen it firm and fast. But at least they didn't confiscate my camcorder and smash it to bits!

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If you wanted the sappy-peppy-syrupy "overall trip recap" video from our 10 courses in 10 days in Scotland, well here you go!

Our 10 day, 10 course tour of every major British Open venue in Scotland - in about 3 1/2 minutes. If it looked like fun... well... you don't know the half of it!