We’re all familiar with the first tee jitters. Teeing it up in front of a crowd, with a card in your hand, or after a big one the night before. But not all first tee shots are equal – here’s five openers that will really get your heart rate up.
Machrihanish
As you approach the first tee at Machrihanish and there’s a sign declaring it “The best opening hole of golf in the world.” A pretty bold statement, but the setting absolutely backs it up – walk back to the medal tee and you’re faced with a tee shot over the Atlantic Ocean to a fairway that curves around the beach to a green 420 yards away. Cut off too much and you’ll be playing your second off the sand, bail out to the right and four fairway bunkers await. It’s an epic start to a truly epic golf course – one of our favourites, and an experience well worth the journey.
Merion
If you’re lucky enough to get a game at a club like Merion, you’re already going to be a little bit on edge. This is, after all, one of America’s most storied clubs – the course where Bobby Jones completed the Grand Slam in 1930, and a multiple US Open host (it’s where Justin Rose won in 2013, and is scheduled to host again in 2030, 2040 and 2050). The first tee on the East Course isn’t just close to the clubhouse – it’s basically part of the club’s busy terrace. As you address the ball, a hush descends on the assembled members. Forget about hitting the fairway, just focus on hitting the ball.
Royal Liverpool
When the pros come to Hoylake for the Open, they start play on the seventeenth hole of the course that the members play. Which means that they avoid the opening shot that everyday golfers face – a short par four with a sharp dog leg around internal out of bounds that separates the course from the practice ground. A driver is too much club unless you’re brave enough to cut the corner, which brings all manner of mishits into play – nothing sets you up for a good day like a fatted long iron in front of the members watching on from the adjacent putting green.
Royal Cinque Ports
Folklore suggests that the front nine is where you make your score at Deal, with the majority of holes played with the prevailing wind at your back. But there’s one minor issue – you have to navigate the first hole before you turn downwind – a par four that plays 420 yards into the teeth of the ever-present breeze, with a public road, the clubhouse and carpark all very much in play for anything that starts to leak off to the right. The rowdy crowd on the club’s first floor balcony will be only too happy to advise whether you need to re-load.
The Old Course
No list of first tee experiences would be complete without including the most famous one of all – the first tee on the Old Course at St Andrews. The starter calls your name, the R&A Clubhouse looms behind you, and a crowd made up of fellow golfers and tourists alike falls silent. Facing you is the widest fairway in the whole world of golf – 125 yards from left to right, with no bunkers, no rough and only the distant Swilken Burn to worry about. But that, of course, just makes it worse: surely you can’t be so bad that you can’t hit this fairway? Ian Baker-Finch famously hit it out-of-bounds left here, en route to a first round 77 in the 1995 Open, just four years after he won the Claret Jug at Royal Birkdale.
