What it’s like competing on the Old Course at St. Andrews

There’s getting to play the Old Course at St. Andrews after which there’s taking part in in competitors on the Outdated Course.

It’s at all times particular to play one of the crucial historic programs within the recreation and the place credited as the house of golf. When the Notre Dame males’s and girls’s golf groups headed throughout the pond for the inaugural St. Andrews Hyperlinks Collegiate, they received to expertise the Outdated Course in a manner so few folks can.

“One phrase could be particular,” Preventing Irish freshman Rocco Salvitti mentioned of the chance to compete at St. Andrews. “It was positively greater than I anticipated.”

GOLF tagged together with the Notre Dame squads as they ready for and performed within the one-of-a-kind faculty occasion that includes three different faculties: Georgetown, North Carolina and Vanderbilt. The journey and occasion have been documented in GOLF’s newest documentary, Beyond The Bend, which you’ll watch in full above.

The match was the first-ever U.S. faculty occasion held at St. Andrews with the opening two rounds happening on the Jubilee course earlier than transferring to the Outdated Course for the ultimate spherical.

It was additionally a novel expertise for all the colleges concerned as every had each its males’s and girls’s groups competing concurrently.

Salvitti received the possibility to stay across the seventeenth inexperienced after his spherical and watch each his males’s crew and girls’s crew teammates end their rounds.

A kind of gamers he received to look at was graduate pupil Lauren Beaudreau who had it to 5 beneath throughout her closing spherical at one level.

“My parents were here, so it was simply nice to shut out such a memorable week with a very nice spherical,” Beaudreau mentioned, after a final-round 70.

Graduate pupil captain Palmer Jackson loved attending to have an Outdated Course caddie for the ultimate spherical.

“I used to be simply speaking to my caddie about the place sure guys within the Open hit it and historic pictures, it was simply form of a extremely cool expertise,” Jackson mentioned.

For extra on Notre Dame’s journey to the Dwelling of Golf for the St. Andrews Hyperlinks Collegiate, you may watch GOLF’s full documentary, Past The Bend, here.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Editor

Jack Hirsh is an assistant editor at GOLF. A Pennsylvania native, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State College, incomes levels in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his highschool golf crew and lately returned to this system to function head coach. Jack additionally nonetheless *tries* to stay aggressive in native amateurs. Earlier than becoming a member of GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a Multimedia Journalist/reporter, but additionally producing, anchoring and even presenting the climate. He will be reached at jack.hirsh@golf.com.