Jim Hartsell — Lying Four

Jim Hartsell didn’t set out to become an expert on Scottish golf, but 25 years’ worth of experience and a natural bias toward remote, unexplored courses have made him a walking travel guide. By day, Hartsell works as an architect in Birmingham, Ala., but most nights, he’s good for at least one heartache-inducing links photo on his Instagram account. Before the coronavirus outbreak, Hartsell was doing one of the things he loves most: planning another golf trip to Scotland. But with those plans on ice, Hartsell has begun work on a new written series for No Laying Up about some of his favorite, less traveled Scottish courses.

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LYING FOUR: How’d you get hooked so hard on Scottish golf?
JIM HARTSELL: As a kid, my dad’s favorite tournament was the Open Championship. I can remember watching that with him when I was a little kid; I think the first one I sort of remember was when Watson won at Carnoustie, and then I sort of remember the next year when Miller won, and Seve almost won. The one that really got my hooked, though, was ’77 at Turnberry. I was just fascinated by the golf courses. I told my dad — and I don’t know, I was 9 or 10 years old — “We’re gonna go over there some day.” And he always wanted to go. When I got out of Mississippi State, I couldn’t have gone without him — I didn’t have any money when I first got out. He told me to set it up; I think ’94 was the first time we went. When I was at State, somebody gave me a copy of Golf in the Kingdom, Michael Murphy’s book — and I was just transfixed by the first half of that book. That made me even more determined to go. And then, not too long after I got out of school, I read To the Linksland by Michael Bamberger, and that to me is in the top five golf books ever written. That just did it for me. And that was about the time my dad started talking about going. And he started asking me what we needed to do to do a trip like that — and he’d never been. Back then, in ’94, it was sort of pre-Internet.

LYING FOUR: No kidding.
JIM HARTSELL: So you actually had to write letters to these places and wait for a response; it’d be two or three weeks before you’d get a response, but they’d always respond. That first trip, I said, “Where do you want to play?” And he said, “I don’t know, I just want to play the Old Course. You do everything else.” So I’d read this book by Bamberger, and I wrote him a letter, and he called me. We talked for about an hour. I guess he got my number through directory assistance. I talked to him about Macrihanish and Cruden Bay. And I told my dad that I couldn’t get a time at the Old, but that somebody had told me you could just get in line. Again, this is ’94; today, you can just find out how to do stuff online. I think it was Bamberger who told me to just go get in line at 6 in the morning. We set the whole thing around going to the Old, but I was just fascinated by Macrihanish. And I told my dad, “We’re going to Macrihanish. We’re gonna stay there for four or five days. And then we’re gonna go to Cruden Bay, and we’re gonna play Carnoustie.” I wanted to play Carnoustie because I’d watched the Open there in ’75; and they still had the old clubhouse in Carnoustie.

LYING FOUR: That sounds like an OK itinerary.
JIM HARTSELL: We set it up — went to Macrihanish, and were absolutely, completely blown away by it. I can’t even describe how great the golf course is. It’s one of my top five favorite courses I’ve ever been to. And while I was there, the place we were staying was a bed and breakfast — the guy was very friendly, and I would always talk to him after we played or in the morning. I was standing there one morning, and I’d already played 18; and I was crazy — my dad was 18, but I’d play all day. I played 54 holes two days on that trip and could’ve played more; it doesn’t get dark until like 10:30. So anyway, I was standing there one day, and the guy said, “What are you gonna do this afternoon?” And I told him I was gonna play Macrihanish again. And he said, “Why don’t you go play this little course called Dunaverty? Not many people ever talk about it, but I think you’d really like it.” So we went over there, and I couldn’t believe the place. It’s just incredible. It’s a short course, but I’ve always had an affection for these quirky, off-the-beaten-path golf courses. It’s a par-66; it’s got a lot of par-3s, but it’s just the most incredible setting for golf that you're ever gonna see. We drove up, and the clubhouse was almost like the Shed at Sweetens Cove; I put it a step above the Shed, but they had just a box that you put five pounds in. We had so much fun. In the first fairway, there were cows and sheep out in the middle of the fairway. The first five holes had these little electric wire fences to keep the cows off. The golf was just so different and so great, and the way that the ball rolled and the shots you had to play — I fell in love with those two places.

The view upon arrival at Cruden Bay Golf Club.

LYING FOUR: So did you get on the Old?
JIM HARTSELL: We went back and got in line at 6. I didn’t even try to play it last year, but I hear stories now that you get in line at midnight. Back then, we went down there at 6, and within an hour the starter had us paired up with a couple of guys. And we played. And the Old deserves whatever accolades it gets: it’s just a great golf course. We had a great time. Then we went up to Cruden Bay, and that was before anybody really knew about Cruden Bay. I was a nut about this stuff; I could quote stuff about Turnberry and Royal St. George’s and Muirfield and Carnoustie, but I had never heard of Cruden Bay until I read that Bamberger book — same for Macrihanish. So we went up to Cruden Bay before it was well known, and they had just a little clubhouse there. We played there for two days and just loved it almost as much as Macrihanish. It’s a different type of golf course, but it’s a great place. It confirmed everything I’d always dreamed about. The golf over there is like a way of life, and everything I thought it would be — and really more. We wound up going back every two years for four more trips.

LYING FOUR: It sounds like Macrihanish made an impression.
JIM HARTSELL: I joined Macrihanish, and for the next four years or six years, we went. We played in several competitions at the club, and my dad went on all these trips. On one of the trips, my cousin and my uncle went, but it was usually just me and him. We would go to Dunaverty every time, and we would alternate: one trip we played North Berwick and that area a lot — the Glen, which is another kind of hidden, unknown course. Every trip, I would try to find something that was kind of off the beaten path, that nobody ever talked about. Everybody knew about North Berwick, but the Glen was one that I just loved; it’s in North Berwick, and it’s sort of a headland links that’s just incredible, but you just don’t hear anything about.

LYING FOUR: If you had to stay in one place in Scotland for a week and only play courses in that immediate area, where would you go? Especially if you wanted to play some of these courses that nobody knows about?
JIM HARTSELL: That’s actually the way I advise people. I’ve done the trip where you drive all over the place, you play one, and then drive to the next. There are some good ones, but Campbeltown: you play Macrihanish, Dunaverty, you can play Macrihanish Dunes — which is a good course — Carradale, which is a brilliant nine-hole, completely hidden golf course and really only about 15 miles up the coast from Campbeltown. Then you could take a short ferry over to Arran, which is the island between Kintyre and the west coast, between Prestick and Kintyre. That’s where my son and I were supposed to go on this trip, which just got cancelled. We were basically gonna stay in Campbeltown, play Machrihanish and Dunaverty — I had to drop the Macrihanish membership in 2010, but I joined at Dunaverty. My recommendation would be that, go over to Arran and play Shiskine — and I don’t even know how to describe how good it is.

LYING FOUR: That’s the 12-holer that Tom Coyne has written about, right?
JIM HARTSELL: Yeah. Of the places we went last year where I’d never been and that just blew my mind, Shiskine was the one that did that. That little island has seven golf courses. You can get a golf pass on Arran for a week for — and I feel like I’m giving away some secrets here — but you can get a golf pass for a week for like 120 pounds, and play all seven of these courses. Now I’m gonna tell you, this is not for everybody. If you want to go over there and play Muirfield and Troon and Carnoustie and Dornoch — I certainly love those places, and I’ve done that, and I totally understand that. But as I’ve gotten older, I love these sort of off-the-beaten-path places. And that’s one reason I love Sweetens Cove so much: Sweetens Cove reminds me of these places. I’ve told Rob that a lot over the years; it has that same kind of feeling and vibe to it. If you like stuff like that, go out to Arran and play Shiskine. If you like an adventure on a trip and finding stuff that maybe not everybody does, then I’d go to Campbeltown, take the ferry over to Arran, and let that be the trip; on the way over, you could play any number of places on the west coast before you jump on the ferry. To me, that’s the difference between Scotland and Ireland: in Scotland, every five miles there’s a golf course. And I’m exaggerating a little bit, but all these little towns have their own golf course — and almost any one of them, if you drive by it, you think, “My God, I’ve gotta stop there and play golf.” I always like to leave a day or two on the trip just for these little places. There’s also this little island out there called Islay —

LYING FOUR: My favorite scotch is from Islay, so I know exactly where that is.
JIM HARTSELL: On one of the trips, we went out and spent two or three days out there. And to me, that’s another great thing; if you like whiskey tours, there are a bunch of great ones out there — Bowmore, Ardbeg.

LYING FOUR: Laphroaig is out there, Lagavulin is out there.
JIM HARTSELL: I don’t think that could be a day trip, just because the ferry ride is so long. But you could go out there, play, spend the night, and come back the next day. And that’s kind of what we were gonna do on this trip that just got cancelled. I always try to throw in a couple of unknown places where we’ve not been. That’s what I enjoy. But you could do that staying in North Berwick, and play Kilspindie and Gullane and Winterfield and the Glen — the list goes on. Same thing if you wanted to go up north and play Brora, Tain, Golspie — those are the type of places that I like. And I love Royal Dornoch, but you can play a lot of golf over there for a fairly reasonable amount of money if you don’t go to all the big places.

LYING FOUR: Does all this links golf kind of ruin American golf for you? I don’t want to sound like a snob, but they’re not the same thing.
JIM HARTSELL: It does. It ruins American golf. If I did not have Sweetens Cove to go to, I would probably lose my mind. That’s why I’m a nut about Sweetens Cove. I took all those trips when I was younger, and then I had kids, so I didn’t go to Scotland for 15 years. And I’d always wanted to go back, but when I found Sweetens Cove, I drove up and it reminded me of driving up to Macrihanish or Cruden Bay: it’s all laid out there before you. We’re lucky we’ve got a little place like Sweetens, but there’s not much to compare it to here. Normal people can’t play Maidstone and National Golf Links, Shinnecock, and all that; there’s a few places in the States that probably have something similar to that kind of golf, but most of them are places that a normal person could never go.

All photos: credit Jim Hartsell

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