The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is one of the most popular tournaments on the DP World Tour schedule.
The annual celebration of seaside golf takes place on three of the world’s finest courses: Kingsbarns, Carnoustie and the Old Course in St Andrews.
It has a festival-like quality and it plays host to some of the world’s greatest golfers, from Rory McIlroy to Jon Rahm, from Tommy Fleetwood to Matt Fitzpatrick, from Brooks Koepka to Billy Horschel.
There are also some of the world’s best-connected amateur hackers in town, as well.
Celebrities, actors, athletes and extremely wealthy businessmen and women are paired with a professional golfer and get to scuttle their balls in all sorts of directions.
It’s not often we see so many bad shots captured by television cameras and it is, of course, inevitable that one or two become accidentally rather good.
It’s also true that golf rewards the average golfer as well as the expert. We can all hole a long putt or chip in from off the green.
That’s the unique beauty of golf.
Here are four of the best hacks from the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship – a mixture of amateur brilliance and downright flukes.
4. Chip off the old block
This is just tremendous. Iona Stephen on commentary starts by praising the swing of Rory McIlroy’s dad Gerry.
Whereupon McIlroy Senior pushes his drive and nobly halts himself from swearing on live TV.
Then, from a terrible lie in a fairway bunker he chips out sideways. We miss the approach that finds wispy greenside rough, but no matter.
We’re back for the fourth shot which disappears like a ferret down a hole.
3. The road to nowhere
The South African businessman Rurik Gobel has knocked his tee shot on the 18th hole at St Andrews on to the road and opted to hit it from there.
“Off the road,” says commentator Jamie Spence and when Gobel makes less than convincing contact he adds: “Oh dear. Oh no.”
But then Spence realises that the shot is not quite as bad as he thought. At least in terms of result.
“Hold on,” he says at it closes in on the hole. “Look at this! Looks at this! No! No!”
It doesn’t quite go in but Spence has enjoyed it. “That would have been amazing,” he says.
2. Freestyling
For a long time this was number one.
The Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps was 159 feet from the flag.
That’s 53 yards.
More than the length of an Olympic swimming pool, in fact.
The world record for the 50m freestyle, by the way, is 20.91 seconds.
At the 2012 Dunhill Links Championship Phelps completed it with one putt in 17 seconds.
“Oh, that’s unbelievable,” gasps Dougie Donnelly on commentary.
1. In off the cliff
Imagine the conversation on the tee.
“What’s the line, caddie?”
“The cliff on the left side of the green.”
If that was the chat then Jeremy Ord, the executive chairman of Dimension Data, hit a decent tee shot on this par-3 at Kingsbarns.
As Dougie Donnelly says on TV: “He plays that off the path … on to the cliff …”
There is a pause as the ball ricochets toward the green.
“It’s not going to go in?!” asks Donnelly. “It’s not going to go in?!?!”
In the background Ken Brown is chuckling away. The ball actually misses the hole but it’s a guaranteed two.
“Ah,” sighs Donnelly.
Superb stuff.
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