Since it is poor form to speak ill of the dead, I will say only that golf course architects Old Tom Morris and James Braid weren’t always 20/20 visionaries. The two Scotsmen were guilty of trespassing someplace dark in the recesses of the mind in imagining the championship course at Carnoustie Golf Links: 18 holes of holy rolling hell, punctured by sandy amoebas and lined with covetous thickets, where a competitor’s best clubs are a shovel and a scythe. The only caddie qualified to carry a bag on this 7,400-yard odyssey is Virgil, but even he is short on guidance. Better to hand the golfer a bible when he asks for his yardage book and recommend prayer when he asks for advice.

Morris, who won three of the first five Open Championships (what we call the British Open), extended Carnoustie in 1867 to 18 holes from the original 10 designed by Allan Robertson a quarter-century earlier. In 1926, Braid, who also won multiple Opens, was hired to upgrade the course to what it approximates today, that being an unshapely crop circle. But Braid had an accomplice, Golf Digest reported in a story about the grounds’ history: James Wright, an amateur designer whom the contemporary press and the last GM of Carnoustie credited with reworking the famous finishing holes. Said the GM, Graeme Duncan: “Carnoustie would not be a championship course without James Wright.”