LIL AND JOHN: Dunhill Links Championship, St Andrews, Scotland

As luck would have it while we stayed with Ereti and Wallace, John spotted a poster advertising the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, being played a short distance down the road over three course, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and the Old Course at St Andrews - and the first three days had free entry and free car parking. This was most unexpected in Scotland and anywhere in the UK where car parking usually costs a week's wages!
He got on the web to see who was playing on which course when and to check out the weather and so we went to St Andrews to watch the second day's play. The golfers played three different courses with the final round at St Andrews.

The wind was very strong but it did not rain! The previous day it had taken the players seven hours to complete 18 holes. The event was played as a pro / am - a pair of pros with a couple of celebrities in each group. One of the amateurs was an 85 year old from Canada who was still playing off 15.

Followed Michael Campbell for a while. he had a pretty good tournament with three good rounds and the usual blow out of 77 on the third day in atrocious conditions - he ended up five shots behind the winner, Karlson. At least he made the cut!

Montgomerie

Also followed Colin Montgomerie, Ernie Els, Paul Casey, Jimenez, Thomas Bjorn, Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and Paul McGinley.

Els

All of the amateurs were pretty handy with a club. The best we saw was probably tennis player Tim Henman who was getting better distance than some of the pros. In the field we saw Olympic rower Steve Redgrave ( National hero over here for winning five gold medals ), Franz Klammer, Hugh Grant, Johan Cruyff, Shaun Pollock, Ian Botham and Shane Warne ( smoking a large cigar but not phoning or texting any women as mobiles were banned from the course ).