Our Experience at The Senior Open Championship, Gleneagles, Scotland, 2022
We had the privilege of visiting Auchterarder, Scotland to attempt to qualify for the British Senior Open Championship (the SOC) to be held at Gleneagles Golf Club, July 21-24. This prestigious tournament is part of the Champions Tour which features the best senior golfers in the world. I’ve watched these guys - Langer, Watson, Els, Mickelson, Duval, Harrington - for a long time and envied the opportunities they’ve had to play and advance the game. If they want to play this tournament, as a member of the Champions Tour they are automatically in. But the rest of us have to play a qualifying tournament to grab one of the 20-30 spots they make available for folks like us. The qualifying tournament is a single day, 18-hole shootout. Because it’s an “open” tournament, you don’t have to be a member of the PGA or even a professional golfer to participate. Amateurs can attempt to qualify as well.
Unlike the US Senior Open, The SOC is geared to draw an international slate of competitors. In the US we have qualifiers scattered across the country starting 2 months before the tournament. If you are from outside the US you might have to make two trips here if you qualify, which is pricey and time-consuming. The SOC holds their qualifiers at four different locations within a half hour or so from the tournament course on the same week as the tournament. Because of this we get to meet golfers from all over the world. This is just one of the wonderful things about this tournament. This year, in particular, the tournament was a backdrop to some amazing experiences for Hannah and me.
Dunblane, Scotland
On this trip we chose a hotel in the village of Dunblane. There is a Doubletree hotel there situated in an old castle. The locals call it The Hydro because it has an indoor swimming pool, hot tub, sauna and gym. We need a gym when we travel, and we like the loyalty points the Hilton group provides. The Hydro is just a couple blocks from the center of the village of Dunblane, full of charming shops, pubs, one great restaurant called The Riverside and a train station.
Our first full day in Scotland was Friday, the second day of The 150th Open Championship (for the younger players) which was being played at The Old Course in Saint Andrews. We drove the 90 minutes there and hung out for the day, watching Tiger play his last hole.
Tiger Woods playing his last hole at The 150th Open in Saint Andrews, at The Old Course.
On Saturday we played our first practice round for the qualifier at the beautiful Glenbervie Golf Club in Larbert, Scotland. Like most courses in the UK, the practice area was small. We walked down a gravel path to an area with about a dozen hitting stations. The practice green was on the back side of the range, too far to walk to. Also like most courses in the UK, this one didn’t have golf carts. You walk and carry or use a hand trolley at most courses in Scotland, and that was the case here.
During our first practice round on Saturday, we met Yuri Tadiotto, an Italian golfer currently living in Belgium. His big personality and bigger drives were fun to play with. By the third hole Hannah and I knew we were playing a special course. It was beautiful, challenging and in great shape. The Scottish countryside, colorful pastures dotted with windmills, was the perfect setting for the three days we would spend here.
Windmills near Glenbervie Golf Club, Larbert, Scotland.
Strangers In A Strange Land
We had an additional practice round on Sunday and were excited to play the tournament the next day. We wanted to get ourselves into a pub early enough on Sunday evening to watch the last bit of The Open so we headed over to The Village Inn, which is exactly what you’d expect a Scottish pub to be like. Small, dark, just below street level. Perfect. There were four adults sitting at the next table also watching The Open. We could tell from their accents that they were American so we struck up a conversation. About an hour later we told them we were qualifying the next day. Being golfers, they were interested and eventually asked for my business card so they could look me up and follow me throughout the week. I didn’t have any with me but Hannah said “His name is really easy to remember. It’s Bill Breen.”
The man jumped up from his seat and got right in Hannah’s face and yelled, “What did you say?!?”
Hannah recoiled only a little and said, “Breen. B-R-E.”
He screamed, “I’m JERRY BREEN! My grandfather was William Breen! He came over from Ireland to Peoria, Illinois in 1862!”
Hannah said “HIS (pointing at me) name is William Breen. His father was William Breen. HIS grandfather came over from Ireland in the mid-1860’s!”
Obviously we are related somehow. What are the chances?
All the Breens - The Village Inn, Dunblane, Scotland.
The Qualifying Round at Glenbervie Golf Club
Hannah was my caddy during the qualifier, which happened to be on the hottest day in Scotland in recorded history; about 85 degrees with moderate humidity. Although it wasn’t what we were expecting, and the Europeans were dying of heat stroke, it didn’t bother us that much, coming from the south. We thought it might be an advantage, actually.
I played a solid round with one birdie and 17 pars, ending up -1 for the day. There were a few opportunities for birdie, but I wasn’t able to convert even on the par 5’s which was a bit of a disappointment. Pros usually target par 5’s as reasonable birdie opportunities. Because we were off early that morning we had a long time to wait to watch the other scores come in. We had lunch, talked with Yuri and even took a nap in the locker room. Our qualifying location had 13 spots available for the tournament out of about 120 players. Nine players shot 69 or under. At the end of the round I sat at 70 along with 9 other guys - so we had a 10-way tie for four spots.
We all gathered back at the tee on the par 5 hole #15 for our first playoff hole. The plan was to rotate between #15, #13 and #14 until we had cut the group down to four. I had parred this hole earlier in the day. We drew for the order of play and split up into two groups of five. Since I’d drawn the #1 slot I teed off first. It was one of my better drives of the day. We watched as a couple guys went right into the heather and a couple went left. I used a 2 hybrid on my second shot and watched it go a little further left than I wanted. When I’d played this hole in regulation I’d gone to the same place and the ball hung up in the rough requiring me to pitch up and putt a couple of times.
We heard somebody say “Good shot.” but you don’t really know what that means when you’re 200 yards away. The other guys made their way toward the green and so did we. About 40 yards out Hannah and I saw a ball on the green, looked at each other and mouthed, “Is that us?” This is not something you want to say out loud with a couple dozen people following you.
It was us…with a 40-foot putt for eagle.
I looked it over good, saw a couple breaks and made a solid stroke. The ball broke left, then veered right and about 12 inches from the hole took a 90-degree turn and dropped into the center of the hole. Eagle! We were in!
Let the celebration begin!
The Legend does a legendary celebration dance.
Actually, now the real work begins. The next two days were practice rounds, followed immediately by the first round of the tournament on Thursday.
The Tears Flowed
We spent an emotional evening at The Village Inn. In the UK the restaurants close very early so by the time we finished with the playoff we were almost too late to eat. The pub had just sent their cook home so they advised us to hop next door and the guys there who had a take-away business would fry us some fish and we could bring it back to the pub where they would serve us what pubs serve best.
It was emotional for many reasons. First, we were overcome with making it into the tournament and what a blessing that all was. Second, the Scottish people really love and appreciate golf. They understand the game so they appreciate how hard it is to get into these tournaments. They are generous with their praise and encouragement. Everyone we had encountered that day was excited for us, especially Derek Gaw, the president of Glenbervie Golf Club. I thought about the other people in my life who have encouraged me; my teachers Jim Suttie and Mike Bender, my family, friends and students, but especially my Dad who worked with his hands to build a putting green in our side yard which was the incubator for my short game. The tears flowed.
It was emotional for another reason as well. In 1996 Dunblane, Scotland was the site of the only school shooting in the history of the UK. A 43-year-old man entered Dunblane primary school at 8:30 AM on March 13, 1996, with four legally owned guns. Within four minutes he murdered 16 grade-school children and 1 teacher, and injured 15 others before turning the gun on himself. That’s all it took to get the UK to outlaw guns and make their citizens turn in the ones they already owned to authorities. We had read about this when we planned the trip and had talked the night before about how devastating that must have been for this small community.
As we were eating and drinking and feeling, a young man, Stewart, began talking to us. His Scottish brogue was very difficult to understand but we were managing to communicate. During the course of the conversation as we talked about how much we liked Dunblane, we mentioned the shooting in 1996. And he said “I know. I was there.”
He was there, a 10-year-old student at the time, in the school when the shooting occurred.
Hannah got up from our table and put her arms around him. Stewart hugged her back.
At some point in the night, Stewart said he could do a handstand and this happened. I guess if you’d gone to school one day and came home minus 16 friends, you’d do this too somewhere down the road.
Just try to get a good night’s sleep after a day like that.
The Senior Open Championship
We arrived at The King’s Golf Course at Gleneagles, the site of the Senior Open Championship, for our first practice round the next day. I walked through “The Village,” an area set up with merchandise, food and relaxation areas for the spectators, to the tournament offices to collect my credentials. The branding and marketing side of these tournaments is on par with the courses themselves. Walking through the images of the greatest senior golfers in the world is a mixed feeling. They are bigger than life. I’m in there with them.
Walking through The Village at The Senior Open Championship at Gleneagles, Scotland 2022.
Once you make these tournaments you’re treated the same as people who’ve been on tour for years, including the courtesy car, which in this case was a suite of Bentleys. Every morning once we qualified, a driver would meet us at the hotel in one of several different Bentleys, drive us to the course, then return us to the hotel when we were finished. This was undoubtedly one of our favorite parts of the whole experience. Hannah was able to return our rental car to the Edinburgh Airport and take the train back to Dunblane where a Bentley picked her up while I was practicing on Wednesday. She quickly got used to that treatment.
The level of service we experienced in Scotland was far above what we experience in the US. From the Bentley drivers to the bartender in the local pub, they take their jobs seriously and make you feel so, so special.
The Bentley courtesy car
The courses where the majors are played are in a class to themselves and Gleneagles was no exception. It is majestic. No matter how nice the qualifying courses are, they do not prepare you for the challenge of a major. This was true when we played Broadmoor in the US Senior Open in 2018, The Old Course in Saint Andrews for the British SOC in 2018 and Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma where we played the Senior PGA Championship in 2021. They are big and hard and a little scary.
Gleneagles, in particular, is intimidating right off the bat. The green on hole #1 lies at an elevation of +15 or so from the fairway with a slope left to right and back to front. Not easy. About half the holes on this course have blind shots, either from the tee or from the fairway, making a local caddy a must. Add the blind shots to the hills on the course and we knew we’d have to get a caddy who could carry my bag and help navigate me around the course. This puts Hannah outside the ropes which she doesn’t like, but which does allow her to get some good video and talk with the locals.
Gleneagles is so spectacular it’s hard to describe. This is not a links course, but more of an American-style course. Still, the ball acts differently over there. For instance, it bounces a lot. Your approach shots often have to land 30 yards in front of the green to keep it from running off the back, something we are not accustomed to on the courses we normally play. The green complexes are, well, complex. One of them is about 60 yards from front to back.
Having just flown over the ocean and played for 3 days straight I needed a little bit of rest so I only played eleven holes during our first practice round. That night at dinner Hannah and I discussed my approach to the next day’s practice round. We kept looking for something other than cliches like “play your game,” or “stay present,” but that’s really about all we came up with. When you’re a few time zones away from home it’s not that easy to be eloquent.
The second practice round put my fears to rest. Walking the course for the second time with Ian, an experienced caddy, and tour player Woody Austin helped me to envision the shots I could make and how to approach each hole. By the end of the second practice round I felt ready.
But when I got up the next morning, well, let’s just say I was a little more than jittery. It’s hard to think of a Senior Major as just another tournament, because it isn’t. It’s the highest level of golf in the world for anyone over 50. The legends I’ve watched all my life are warming up next to me. There is an announcer with a microphone, and even in the early morning, when we were teeing off the first day, there is a gallery watching you, growing as the day goes on.
Tee shot, day 1, Gleneagles, The Senior Open Championship 2022.
It was an almost perfect day for golf. Overcast, still, comfortable temperature, dry. I birdied the third hole so for a while if you googled “Senior Open Championship” you saw my name at the top of the leaderboard. Hannah liked that.
We got the feel for the course and by the end of the first day I had carded 3 birdies and 2 bogeys to end a round in a Senior Major tournament under par, for the first time in my playing career.
The second round was a different story. Since the beginning of this trip we’d had very un-Scotland-like weather. Warm, nearly hot, dry, no wind. But we knew we were in Scotland on the second day of the tournament. Although the wind wasn’t bad, it was there, affecting our tee balls and fairway shots. It had rained overnight, softening up the greens which putted completely different from the first day. There were still moments of brilliance, like the par-saving putts on #8 and #13 that made Hannah squeal (which delighted the locals).
Par!!!
Toward the end of the round, though, mental fatigue began to set in and I started feeling like a guy who had flown across the ocean and walked 18 holes for 7 days straight. I bogeyed 2 of the last 4 holes and my par putt on 18 stopped less than an inch from the hole. That par would have secured my play through the weekend. At the end of the day I missed the cut by 1, still my best showing in the British Senior Open Championship to date.
That takes a minute to come back from.
Being Tourists
The balance of the weekend we spent as tourists, attending a free classical organ concert at Dunblane Cathedral, followed by a soup lunch provided by the locals. One alcove of the cathedral was used as a schoolroom during the 14th and 15th centuries. The pastor there pointed out to us what was their version of teenage graffiti back in the day.
Many of the children killed in the massacre in 1996 attended this church. A prayer vigil and later a memorial service were both held here to honor the victims. There is a monument to them in the nave featuring quotations including this from W. H. Auden:
"We are linked as children in a circle dancing"
One more toast to The Senior Open Championship.
On our last night in Dunblane, the SOC hosted a cocktail party at Gleneagles Resort for the players. We sat in the bar, marveling at the beauty of this special place and full of thankfulness for all we had experienced.
We spent Sunday in Edinburgh where Derek Gaw took us out to lunch and toured us around that vibrant city for a bit.
We spent our last night at a hotel near the Edinburgh airport along with several other golfers, including Miguel Angel Jimenez.
“Golf is tough.
Golf is maddening.
Golf is delicate.”
Hannah waved Mr. Jimenez over to us as he was heading up to his room. We asked him how he played and he said “Terrible! Just terrible!” Then correcting himself he said, “I played good golf badly.”
Hannah told him we’d missed the cut by 1 stroke and he looked at me and said “Why you miss?! Why you miss?! Golf is delicate.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Golf is tough. Golf is maddening. Golf is delicate.
And it’s a great way to spend your life.
Home Sweet Home. Harpeth Valley Golf Center, Nashville, Tennessee.
Thank you for encouraging me along the way in the pursuit of this great game that is so much more than a game.
Golf is delicate. Golf is life.
Keep it in the short grass.
Bill