Gold Rush: Victory Yes, Haggis No
10/6/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
Oct. 6, 2002
By Jay Reddick
The Wake Forest men's golf team took a trip to Scotland and came away with a great appreciation for the culture and history of that country.
Just not the food.
"We didn't have any haggis," said senior Chad Wilfong. "It looked like a bad piece of sausage."
"You guys open up the thing at breakfast?" junior Bill Haas asked about the dish, made from sheep innards, on a buffet.
"Yeah, it was awful," said senior Chris Yoder.
"Smelled so bad," Wilfong agreed.
The local cuisine proved to be one of the few low points of the team's trip in the first week of September, a journey that included a victory in the International Intercollegiate.
That event was played on the Torrance Course at St. Andrews, and the team played three rounds there but also played at several other courses in the area, including a round on St. Andrews' Old Course, the legendary birthplace of golf.
"Growing up, you hear stories about the Old Course and Scotland, and you never think about actually going over and playing," Wilfong said. "It's a completely different style of golf. The courses are so different, and the weather's unpredictable. I thought it was much more fun. We see the same stuff every time we play, and over there, it's always different."
Once the team got past jet lag, dealing with links-style golf was its biggest challenge. Links courses have few trees, but parts of the rough are made of dense, thick weeds called heather, which all the players experienced at one time or another during the week.
"The most difficult thing about the high rough was that you can actually find it and play out of it," Haas said. "Over here, you'd never find the ball. They grow it so you're going to have to hack out of it."
American golf fans' most recent memory of golf in Great Britain involves this summer's British Open, in which a powerful rainstorm with near gale-force winds made play next to impossible during the third round. The Deacons never experienced anything like that, but it did rain during one practice round, and the wind was a constant companion.
"The wind makes it difficult, not knowing where your ball is going," Yoder said. "Both tournament days, we lucked out, the weather was good."
When the team wasn't concentrating on its golf game, it enjoyed taking in the sights and sounds of the small town of St. Andrews. The town is centered around the University of St. Andrews, founded in 1411, and around the game invented there at around the same time.
"It's such a small town," Haas said. "During the day you'd see 5,000 people on the streets, and at night you couldn't hear a sound. We got to see the diverse ways of living, and the whole past history of Europe right in front of you."
More than one person on the trip commented on a series of two- and three-foot walls found on several courses in the area.
"I guess they were ruins of some old buildings they didn't get rid of, from several hundred years ago," Wilfong said. "Some were between holes, and some wound in the middle of holes. It was neat. You don't get that over here."
And of course, there was the food. Since illness wouldn't have been conducive to winning golf tournaments, the players mostly stayed away from anything unfamiliar.
"We ate at a local restaurant the first night, and it was kind of iffy," Wilfong said. "We found some Americanized restaurants after that. Subway kept us alive during the day, and we found a Darryl's/TGI Fridays type of place to eat at night."
By the time the week was over, the team not only had stories to tell, it had a victory.
"We had a wonderful week," coach Jerry Haas said. "We have some great memories, and it was something I was happy to do for these guys because they've done a lot for this program."