Town in Angus, Scotland
Carnoustie
A golfer once stood in a burn with his trousers rolled up on Carnoustie's 18th, needing only a six to win the Open. He made seven, and the course has been called Car-nasty ever since.
Key information
- County
- Angus
- Nation
- Scotland
- Population
- About 11,400 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Carnoustie Golf Links and the Open Championship
- Famous people
- Stewart Maiden, Alex Smith, Willie Smith, Macdonald Smith
- Football clubs
- Carnoustie Panmure
About Carnoustie
The seven that shocked the golfing world
Sunday, 18 July 1999. Jean van de Velde stands on the final tee at Carnoustie with a three-shot lead. He can afford to make a double bogey and still win the Open. He makes a triple. His drive goes right, his second shot hits a grandstand and bounces back, and his third ends up in the Barry Burn. He takes off his shoes and socks and wades in to consider playing the ball from the water. He eventually takes a drop and finishes with a seven. That forced a playoff, and Paul Lawrie won it. He had started the final round ten shots behind, the biggest comeback in a major to that point. The picture of the barefoot Frenchman is still one of the best-known images in golf.
Why they call it Car-nasty
Carnoustie's Championship course has a reputation as the toughest on the Open rota. It is a flat, exposed links beside the North Sea. It has fast-running fairways, deep bunkers and burns that twist across the closing holes, and the wind can change the whole day. The finish is the hardest part. The Barry Burn winds across the 17th and 18th, and Jockie's Burn also comes into play on the 17th. Holes that look easy on the card have wrecked plenty of good rounds. Players have been calling it Car-nasty for decades.
The Wee Ice Mon
In 1953 Ben Hogan crossed the Atlantic to play his only Open. He had survived a near-fatal car crash four years earlier, and he treated Carnoustie like a military operation. He practised for weeks, walking the course and measuring the bunkers and lines. He also used the neighbouring Panmure links to prepare. He won, and it completed a treble of the Masters, US Open and Open in a single year. Locals nicknamed him the Wee Ice Mon for his unsmiling concentration. The sixth hole is still known as Hogan's Alley, after the narrow line he took down its fairway. The Open has been to Carnoustie eight times. The winners were Tommy Armour (1931), Henry Cotton (1937), Hogan (1953), Gary Player (1968), Tom Watson (1975), Paul Lawrie (1999), Padraig Harrington (2007) and Francesco Molinari (2018).
The town that taught America to golf
Golf was being played on the links here by the 1500s, but modern Carnoustie golf took shape in the 1800s. Allan Robertson laid out a ten-hole course in 1842, Old Tom Morris extended it to 18 holes in 1867, and James Braid reworked it in the 1920s. The town also exported its talent. Carnoustie-born professionals and club-makers emigrated to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and hundreds of them taught the game there. Alex Smith won the US Open in 1906 and 1910, and his brother Willie won it in 1899. Another brother, Macdonald Smith, was one of the finest players of his day. Stewart Maiden, also from Carnoustie, taught a young Bobby Jones in Atlanta. The nickname for this export of expertise was the Carnoustie contribution to American golf, and it is hard to overstate how much of the early US game came from one small Angus town.
From jute to the beach
Carnoustie grew quickly in the Victorian era. The railway arrived in the 1830s, and linen and jute weaving brought work and workers. The town developed out of older fishing settlements and the farm lands around it, and it is still a stop on the Edinburgh to Aberdeen line. Today it is a seaside town of about 11,000 people, with a long sandy beach, a promenade and a busy high street. The golf sits right beside the houses, so you can walk from the shops to the first tee. The Barry Buddon training area stretches along the coast to the west, and the fairways and the military ranges share the same dunes. There are three public courses: the Championship, the Burnside and the Buddon Links. Carnoustie is also one of the three courses used for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship each autumn, alongside St Andrews and Kingsbarns. The local football side, Carnoustie Panmure, plays in junior football, which is the Scottish name for a long-running grassroots tier of the game.