And it was a bonnie putt that won the tournament. MacIntyre was headed for a playoff–tied at seventeen under–and it was this put that would make that happen, because he hit it too gently. It died at the cup.
No, it didn’t. I had one more roll. Plop.
And this young man became the first Scot to win the Scottish Open in 25 years.
He’s a small-town boy. Oban, on the west coast, is about 24,000 people. Here it is on a map. I post this for all the lovely names in that part of Scotland, including Oban.
It’s kind of a touristy town, I guess, and this photo suggests why that is so. Oban is lovely, too.
The victory came on the Renaissance Course, also in the west of Scotland, so when that putt went in, the crowed was even more jubilant than the guy who won the tournament. Scots, to counter the impression Elizabeth and I have of them, are not “dour.” They are warm and friendly and given to moments of great jubilation. Like this one:
This was Robert’s first PGA Tour win, earlier this year, in the Canadian Open, and he’s sharing a hug with his caddie. That’d be his Dad, Dougie.
And a Scot winning the Canadian Open is perfect for history, as well. This is Sword Beach on D-Day and you can see a young bagpiper getting ready to offload. He’s with a British regiment, but Bill Millin is actually Canadian. There’s a statue for Bill, there today.
So I think this calls for bagpipes. These pipers are marching across a bridge near Arnhem, Holland–the “Bridge Too Far” in Corneilus Ryan’s wonderful book, key in Operation Market Garden, the attempt to force a crossing over the Rhine and into Germany in September 1944. It was Field Marshal Lord Montgomery’s scheme, and it was a disaster.
My Dad—Lt. Dad, in this photo, when he served in London as Quartermaster, befriended a Canadian bagpiper from a Canadian regiment, the Princess Pats. He was one of the last pipers alive in that regiment, in 1944. The rest were two or three years dead, in temporary graves in North Africa.
And, as always—maybe it’s my Dad— no matter where I start, I come back again to my hometown. Operation Market Garden included two South County soldiers. Art Youman was promoted to sergeant for his leadership in Holland. His commanding officer was Dick Winters, Easy Company–the “Band of Brothers.”
Lt. William Francis Everding, from Oceano, another 101st Airborne paratrooper, was killed in a fierce German counterattack on the Dutch village into which he’d parachuted at the beginning of Market Garden.
Holland was eventually liberated. This photo gives you a feel, I think, for how Yanks felt about the Dutch.
Scotland is 5,000 miles away; Holland a bit farther than that. But the fact is that bagpipers crossing the John Frost Bridge—and, of all things, a Scots golfer who loves his Da–can have an emotional wallop on this extremely amateur historian—that means something.
I think it means that we, all of us, no matter how distant we might be in time and space, are somehow bound together in deep and passionate ways that we’re not meant to understand or to see, except in brief moments when our peripheral vision allows us to see them. What follows is a flash, very warm and very brief, of recognition. We are ennobled then. Robert MacIntyre’s victory today ennobled me. It made me so happy that I married a woman with deep ancestral roots in Scotland.
A Work in Progress 