Room with a view

Dreamtime. Standing by a third-floor bedroom window in the Old Course Hotel, the thought occurs that someone must have dropped some magic mushrooms into last evening's side salad. The vista is unreal. The sun's early-morning rays have transformed the "old gray toon" - that ugly skyline of limestone and redbrick buildings - of St Andrews into a psychedelic Disneyland of colour. Below, the 17th fairway is an artist's delight, a wondrous arrangement of light contrasting with shadow.

The view is tremendous. You can cast your gaze over the Swilken Burn and up towards the Royal and Ancient clubhouse to the town, where the course starts and finishes. And you can imagine yourself standing on that 18th tee, having conquered the Road Hole, and, given the width of the fairway that doubles as first and last, wonder how on earth you could miss it. Gene Sarazen's words spring to mind. "I wish that every man who plays golf could play St Andrews once," he said.

An hour or so later and it's wake-up time. A bitter, chilling wind rolls in off the North Sea surf to offer a reality check to dreamy thoughts; it's the type of wind that finally makes you realise why the hip-flask was invented and, worse, makes you wish you had one. The copious layers of clothing don't seem sufficient to fend off the elements and the sanctuary of Alan McGregor's office in the new Links clubhouse is warm and welcome.

McGregor is the general manager of the St Andrews Links Trust. There is a perception abroad that it is nigh near impossible to play a round on the Old Course. If anything, as McGregor is quick to point out, the opposite is the case; however, numbers nowadays are limited to 42,000 a year - a breakdown ratio of 60:40 in favour of locals - with a democratic ballot every day to determine just who, for the green fee of £80 sterling, gets to play the next day. Locals, of course, have it easier. For the grand sum of £98 sterling a year, they have access to all six public courses at St Andrews Links.

That's another misconception. St Andrews isn't just the Old Course. There is also the New Course (opened, despite its name, in 1895), the Jubilee Course (reputed to be the toughest), the Eden Course (designed by Harry Colt), the Strathtyrum Course (opened in 1993, the first new 18-hole course to come into play at St Andrews for nearly 80 years) and the Balgove Course (a nine-hole course popular with children and beginners) to complement what is the largest golfing complex in Europe.

Next week the world's finest golfers will battle it out for the Claret Jug over the Old Course. Not everyone loves it. Scott Hoch, the American golfer, once said of it: "It's the worst piece of mess I've ever seen. I think they had some sheep and goats there that died and they just covered them all up."

It's obvious such a view is not shared by McGregor, who dispatches every titbit and piece of information about the Old Course as if he is talking about a loved one. He has overseen the installation of a £2.5 million sterling irrigation system and the creation of a new clubhouse. But one of the more immediately noticeable changes is to the bunkers on the Old Course. All 112 have been refaced: from the notorious Road Hole Bunker on the 17th to the innocuous-looking Kruger on the ninth hole, every individual bunker was stripped down and the sides were refaced using layer upon layer of turf, a process known as revetting.

"It is a major achievement for the greenkeeping team," said McGregor. "This is the first time in the history of the course that all the bunkers have been revetted in one go - usually bunkers are repaired and renewed on a five-year rolling programme."

Three of the largest bunkers - Hell, Shell and Cottage - had more extensive work carried out. They were rebuilt using railway sleepers sunk into concrete to create a template for future repairs. McGregor estimates that about six and a half acres of turf from the Links Trust's own nursery were used.

Indeed, the bunkers are an integral part of the course; along with the contours of the giant greens and, if God allows, wind, they represent part of the course's defence mechanism to the big-hitting professionals who will roll into town for the millennium staging of the world's greatest championship. Unlike Carnoustie last year, when the rough was allowed to imitate grasses in a Brazilian rainforest, no such trickery will face the players.

Eddie Adams, the head greenkeeper on the Old Course, has been at St Andrews for 15 years. He is a believer in traditional methods. Although the new irrigation system will ultimately feed all the courses on the Links, it will be selective. "We're trying to focus on areas that only require enough water to survive. To over-water here is to ruin it," he said. "The grasses we're trying to keep are actually water-starved grasses because of the site that we're on. St Andrews receives about 25 inches of rain a year, and we're trying to achieve an indigenous golf course, a natural golf course."

So it is that the irrigation will concentrate on select areas such as greens, walkways and the tops of bunkers and hills.

Likewise, Adams has kept fertiliser input to a minimum and concentrated on traditional methods - verti-draining down to a depth of 12 inches, to encourage the indigenous grasses to move back in. "I felt it was important to get the "linksy" type of feel back," he insisted. "As of now, I think we're about 95 per cent pure - but the last five per cent is hard to achieve." In his view, though, the course is in fantastic condition, ready for the British Open's return.

"We're hoping that, by the law of averages, we will have a hard, fast-running course for the Open, that it will be as firey as possible. We'd like a good, burnt course. And, with such a course, the bunkers will come into play," said Adams. "It'll be similar to the Dunhill Cup, except much faster. We've no hidden agenda, no surprises in store for the players. But even the likes of Tiger Woods will have to think his way around.

"We have no intention to trick up the rough. As Alister MacKenzie said, `golf is for everyone', and that means that the rough shouldn't be deliberately cultivated. If a player goes into rough, then he should still have the chance to hit a well struck shot," insisted Adams.

The same for the greens. Again, there will be no trickery and Ian Forbes, the Links Manager for the Trust, believes that they will be around 101/2 on the stimpmeter, the same as in 1995. "Nobody ever said greens had to be fast," he said, adding: "If we go any faster there would be problems because of all the swails, hollows and hills and, of course, the wind."

The damn wind. I'd looked forward to my first round of golf on the Old Course. Many, many times I had walked the course, behind the ropes, following players on Dunhill Cup duty. But no matter what Mr Hoch says, you can't help but feel the history of the game seep through your very pores as you make your way to the first tee for the first time and, once suspects, every time.

This is the home of golf, a course that wasn't designed by man but by nature. It has evolved over six centuries: originally, it was played over 22 holes, using the same 11 holes on the way out and in but, in 1764, this was reduced to 18 which came to be adopted as the standard number of holes for courses worldwide.

This is a course which lends itself to strange bounces and hidden bunkers. To giant double greens where a golfer can face a putt up to 100 yards long. The only single greens are the first, ninth, 17th and 18th. This is the course that Peter Thomson said, "will always be the greatest". The one of which Bobby Jones remarked: "If I had ever been sat down and told I was to play there and nowhere else for the rest of my life, I would have chosen the Old Course at St Andrews."

I didn't get to play it the way Woods and company will next week. For starters, we were handed mats (used to protect the links in the run-up to the Open) to be used on teeboxes and fairways, and an icy wind with huge drops of water which hadn't decided if they were hailstones or snow. I suspected that my playing companion, Alan McGregor, who had been over the links on numerous occasions, would have retired to the warmth of the splendid new clubhouse at the slightest suggestion.

In the end, we settled on playing eight holes. Thankfully, it was a rewarding exercise . . . a birdie on the third and a par on the 18th (our eighth, having doubled back) made the masochistic exercise of playing in sub-Arctic conditions a rewarding one.

Also, it meant we had the chance to play one of the most famous shots in golf - off the 17th tee and over the conservatory that is attached to the Old Course Hotel. Earlier, Andrew Phelan, the general manager of that five-star establishment, and a native of Waterford, had provided a guided tour of the hotel extension that runs close to the teebox and also showed why the conservatory area is like a bunker in the frontline. Despite the reinforced glass used in its construction, there were spider cracks all over the panes - the result of wayward and short tee-shots off the 17th - the panels are regularly replaced.

Indeed, the proximity of the 17th teebox is such that Phelan recalls one occasion, during the 1995 Open, when he noticed Greg Norman - a regular guest - suddenly arriving into the kitchens in search of a lavatory. And, rather than the customary champagne for the winner John Daly, Phelan dispatched two pint milk shakes to the new champion's room.

Only the rich and famous will get a chance to glance down over the 17th fairway from the hotel next week, although the BBC will have one of their 50 cameras positioned there to capture the unfolding drama.

As for the course? Well, those who hate it, a la Mr Hoch, are the losers. It may not be the greatest course in the world, and it doesn't profess to be, but it is the genuine home of golf. Seve Ballesteros probably got it right when he said, "victory anywhere is sweet but to win at St Andrews is so special it rises above everything else".