There are a handful of iconic sites in the sporting world whose names evoke centuries of accomplishment and incident, excitement and tragedy. Fenway Park. Wembley. Augusta National. Wimbledon. Lambeau Field. Alpe d'Huez. Madison Square Garden.
But in this roll call of greatness there is still one place that stands above the rest, a setting with no equal, a sporting venue that is centuries old but which has never been more relevant. It is the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland, and this week it's hosting The Open Championship for the 29th time since the inaugural playing of the tournament in 1860.
There is nowhere else like it, yet one of the enduring questions surrounding the Old Course is this: What, beyond history, makes it so great? It's been debated for decades, if not centuries, given that golf was originally played on this ground in the 1400s. Sam Snead might have summed up the sentiment of the uninitiated best in 1946. He won The Open that year, but prior to the tournament, as he arrived on the train that pulled in right beside the course, he was overheard to say, "Hey, what's that big abandoned field out there?"
Upon first glance, the Old Course looks rather flat and barren, its (usually) brownish turf rumpled and furled like a carelessly unrolled carpet. This might be the ultimate bucket-list destination for keen golfers, but the first time you see it, you might just wonder: "This is it?" The Old Course has less curb appeal than any other great course – you have to play it to know its charms. And it's impossible to ever fully know, which is a big factor in its appeal. It is infinitely mysterious. It rewards study and patient application. It is addictive in that, the more you play it, the more you want to play it. But why?
To begin with, it is a masterpiece of simplicity. Every hole looks straightforward and has a safe, bailout option, usually to the left side – it's a classic out-and-back loop with many shared greens and even some shared fairway portions. Those safe tee shots, however, lead to longer and much more challenging approach shots. If you want simpler approach shots, you'll have to hit drives in a more direct line to the green. That brings into play the out-of-bounds to the right of nearly every hole, not to mention the high fescue and fearsome gorse. It's all so simple until it isn't.
And once you find the putting surfaces, you'll be on gigantic greens that feature wild undulations – except for one or two that are disorientingly flat. You can often fly the ball to the greens, but there are also any number of ways to run or punch a ball on to the surfaces. In 2005, Tiger Woods famously hit his approaches on the par-four sixth every day from about 60 yards with his putter – it was the right shot and took great imagination and confidence.
It's not just the overall vibe of the Old Course that makes it great. There are also some peerless individual holes, including what might be the world's most famous par four, the 17th – the Road Hole. Your drive must carry part of the Old Course Hotel to find a creased ribbon of fairway, from which you have to hit a long iron to a hard green backed by a gravel road and pimpled in front with a deep bunker that gathers balls as if by gravitational pull. Opens have been lost at the Road Hole.
Just ask Tom Watson, who blew a 2-iron over the 17th green in the last round in 1984, a mistake that opened the door for Seve Ballesteros to win.Then there is the 11th, a par three facing the Eden Estuary, a hole as evil as it is beautiful. It was at this hole in the 1921 Open that Bobby Jones hit his tee shot into a deep, sharp pot bunker guarding the front pin. Four swings later, his ball still in the bunker, Jones stepped out, walked off the course and went back to America.
Six years later, having calmed down by then, Jones returned and won The Open at the Old Course. He came to love the Old Course and St. Andrews, and when he was presented with the keys to the city in 1958, he said, "I could take out of my life everything but my experiences here in St. Andrews and I would still have had a rich and full life." It was a long courtship, but, like so many before and after him, Jones succumbed to the charms of the Old Course.
One of those charms worth remembering is that the Old Course is a public facility. The magisterial Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, the sandstone edifice that sits behind the first tee, does not own the Old Course or, indeed, any golf course. It's simply a member's club that happens to sit beside the Old Course (and acts as the governing body for the game for most of the world). The Old Course is owned by the town's St. Andrews Links Trust, which also owns the other courses that sit on that spit of land. (The New Course, laid out in 1895, is nearly the equal of the Old in terms of difficulty and allure.)
By the way, if you happen to be lucky enough to be heading to St. Andrews in person for this year's Open, you will love the town, but it's not the easiest course on which to observe golf in person. The Old Course is great to watch on television, but, oddly, it's not quite as satisfying in person, simply because no matter where you are watching from, you are never actually allowed on the golf course proper. The Old Course's idiosyncratic shepherd's crook routing means that every hole parallels another with little room in between. Spectators are therefore kept outside the ropes of the course.
It's still a thrilling first-hand viewing experience, but you might be wise to seek out two fantastic vantage points, the first tucked in behind the 11th tee (from which you can see action on holes 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11) and to the right of the second tee (with a view of holes 1, 2, 17 and 18).
And so this brings us to the tournament proper. It's a shame Rory McIlory turned his ankle playing soccer with his mates a couple of weeks ago, because he (and the rest of the golfing universe) was primed for a showdown with Jordan Spieth. That won't happen now, though there is an intriguing Spieth-Rickie Fowler possibility.
Otherwise, history suggests the winner is likely to come from among only a dozen or so players, including Spieth, Fowler, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Louis Oosthuizen, Henrik Stenson, Charl Schwartzel and Adam Scott.
There are many other famous players who are unlikely to challenge. Phil Mickelson can't trust his putter. Dustin Johnson hasn't shown he has the requisite mental strength in the pitched moments. Bubba Watson will find a way to sulk himself out of it. Likelier possibilities include Jason Day (if he's healthy), Victor Dubuisson, Patrick Reed and Brandt Snedeker. A good dark-horse pick is Paul Casey.
As for Tiger, do we really even need to ask anymore? He may make the cut, but his mental hard drive is so corrupted by personal and technical viruses that it's unlikely he'll challenge for another major outside of the odd nostalgic burst at The Masters.
And if Spieth does win this Open (despite his lack of preparation after choosing to play – and win – the John Deere Classic in Illinois instead of immersing himself in links golf), well, we should just put him in charge of the Greek financial crisis and have him clean up the global environment in his spare time, because he'll clearly be capable of achieving anything.
The reason why there are so few players likely to win at the Old Course is because it has a deep and nearly infallible record of producing cream-of-the-crop winners. All four majors have occasionally been won by unknowns, but that has almost never happened at the Old Course, and certainly not in the last half-century or so. Jack Nicklaus won two of his Opens at the Old Course. Seve Ballesteros won there in 1984. Nick Faldo in 1990. Tiger in 2000 and 2005. Even the less-than-household names were the best of the moment. John Daly won there in 1995, and the last time The Open was held at the Old Course, in 2010, the winner was Oosthuizen. Before you say "who?" it should be noted that Oosthuizen is considered by aficionados of the golf swing to have the quite possibly the purest action the game has ever seen (with any luck, Oosthuizen would have three majors by now; he was second at the Masters to Bubba and again at the recent U.S. Open to Spieth).
The 2015 Open will have it all because the Old Course has it all: a thrilling history, a brilliant combination of quirks and tactical demands, the greatest two-hole finish in golf theatre, an ineffable ability to identify the best of the best amid high drama or affirmation of immortality, or both. Of all that could happen at St. Andrews this week, there is one thing that surely will happen: Come Sunday afternoon, the Old Course will have anointed one golfer as among the best of his time, a golfer capable of handling the historic pressure that attends winning The Open at St. Andrews. There are no flukes at the Old Course. The ancient links knows who walks upon it.
Curtis Gillespie is the author of five books, including the golf memoir Playing Through, and he has won seven National Magazine Awards for his writing on culture, sports, politics and the arts. He played on the University of St. Andrews golf team in 1987.