I was dropping my pants in the private parking lot of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews, Scotland, and the feeling was kind of dreamlike. A few feet away, standing on the first tee of the hallowed Old Course, my friends were taking practice swings and preparing to play. The Old Course starter was alternately checking his watch and eyeing me as I frantically removed my Levis while balancing myself against the open car trunk. Now wearing only a black golf shirt and my boxer shorts (the colorful ones with the little German Shepherds printed all over them), I searched through my duffle bag for a suitable pair of khakis. As I bent over to dig into my bag, I felt the full impact of a freshening breeze off the nearby North Sea.

I was only vaguely aware of the small crowd — no doubt amused by the antics of the half-naked American in the R&A car park — that lingered around the first tee and 18th green of the Old Course. I quickly pulled on pants, socks, and golf shoes. Lifting my golf bag from the trunk and onto my shoulder, I sprinted down the small set of stone steps onto the first tee just as the starter called out, “Gentlemen on the tee, play away, please.”

For me, this was the frenzied start of a Ryder Cup-style golf tournament pitting a team of eight Americans (myself included) against eight Scotsmen. Twenty years ago, as a college junior, I spent a year studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. While there, I established several lasting friendships with fellow students, both Scots and ex-patriate Americans. This golf outing would bring several of us back together. All of the players are average golfers at best, but with national pride and honor at stake, we hoped to elevate our games during the three-day event that would play out on four golf courses, including the Old Course, on Scotland’s east coast.

After flying overnight to the United Kingdom from Denver, I landed in Edinburgh on a drizzly afternoon and was met by one of the members of the Scottish team. Michael, or “Wee Mikey” as he is more commonly known, quickly grabbed my golf bag off the luggage carousal. “We have to git yer kit and drive up to St. Andrews straight away,” he said. “Play stairts on the Old Course in an hour’s time.” I had expected to spend the rest of the afternoon working off the jet lag with a good nap or catching up with my friends in some pub, but instead I soon found myself speeding through the Scottish countryside in the passenger seat of a Ford Fiesta driven by a Scot named Wee Mikey in order to make a pressing tee time.

As we hurtled along the two-lane A91 toward St. Andrews, Mikey aggressively passed slower moving traffic. In an effort to fend off the nausea, I distracted myself by idly chatting with Mikey about golf, family and work. Mikey said that he worked in sales for a large pharmaceutical company. I asked which drugs he sold. “I’m the Viagra rep for southeast Scotland,” he said. I glanced over him with a doubtful expression. “I widnae lie aboot tha’,” he said with a naughty smile.

Suddenly, Wee Mikey’s cell phone rang. An urgent Viagra order from a doctor with a waiting room full of Scotsmen with E.D., I wondered to myself? No. It was Ian MacCallum, the Scottish team captain, calling from the starter’s hut at the Old Course wondering where we were. Mikey spoke quickly with Ian in a nearly indecipherable Scottish burr, but I picked up a few words and got the essence of the conversation. The clock was ticking. Ian was anxious. Twenty minutes until the assigned tee time, and we were stuck in traffic on the High Street of a small town called Cupar at least 10 miles from St. Andrews.

“Bollocks!” said Wee Mikey as we stopped again to wait for several uniformed school children to cross the High Street on their way home. They all seemed to have red hair and unnaturally pale skin.

After freeing ourselves from the stranglehold of Cupar, we made great time over the last few miles leading into the ancient town of St. Andrews. The Old Course was upon us quickly, and I got a thrilling glimpse of the famous Road Hole and vast openness of the St. Andrews linksland to my left. I was so close to playing this great course that I could barely contain my excitement. Two quick left turns, and Mikey deposited me beside the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse.

With that first hurried tee shot played into the teeth of near gale force winds, I became immediately aware that playing conditions would be different from anything I was used to at home. Initially, the horizontal rain, ridiculously firm fairways, and fiendish pot bunkers were downright charming — a true Scottish links experience. By the second hole, however, the glamor wore off and frustration set in.

All the Americans were outside our golf comfort zones, but none more so than James, my playing partner at the Old Course. James likes his comforts. His nickname, “Sheets,” stems from his remarkable capacity for sleep. The man is a champion napper and man of leisure. Aside from breaking his vow never to play golf in temperatures below 80 degrees Fahrenheit, Sheets was particularly distressed about having to walk during the round — something he never does because it requires an unnecessary level of exertion. The first genuine sign of trouble, though, occurred on the elevated tee box of the Old Course’s long par-four sixth hole. I noticed Sheets gazing wistfully off toward the North Sea to the right and then behind him back toward the town of St. Andrews in the distance.
“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it, Sheets?” I said.

“Where’s the damn beer cart?” he said with a pronounced Louisiana drawl.

Sheets looked perplexed when I informed him that, on traditional Scottish golf courses, there are no carts of any sort, beer or otherwise. Obviously rattled by this news, Sheets proceeded to launch a spectacular slice into a great thicket (or “whin” as the Scots call it) of unforgiving, yellow-flowered gorse. “Tha’ll nae be fund,” said Wee Mikey matter-of-factly before finding the middle of the fairway with a long drive that never rose more than twenty-five feet off the ground.

The Scots possessed golf games clearly honed in the 30 mph winds that confronted us throughout the weekend. Each played a beautiful, low draw — thereby keeping the ball under the wind. They were also masterful in negotiating the nasty humps and hollows in front of the greens with the running bump-and-run shot. “Are yew daft, Webby?” Ian said after observing yet another one of my soaring lob-wedge shots getting carried into a pot bunker by the wind. “Keep the baw doun on the grund!”

In addition to their well-suited golf skills, our Scottish opponents were accomplished in playing mind games. During a match in a downpour at the 500-year-old links at Elie, for example, Ian pointed out that the rain suit worn by my teammate John — which was the unfortunate green color of an elementary school chalkboard — resembled the uniform of an Edinburgh garbage man. For three days, John had to endure frequent shouts of “Whan’s recycling day?” and “Hit it lang, Dustman.” And then there was the breakfast prior to the all-important singles matches where the Americans found a copy of an erectile dysfunction questionnaire at each place setting courtesy of Wee Mikey. At the next table, Mikey and the Scottish team sat snickering into their plates of fatty bacon and grilled tomatoes.

My own lame efforts at mind games would prove futile. My Scottish opponent at Kingsbarns Golf Links was a fine player called “H” (“I dinna know if ya noticed,” he would say when asked about his nickname, “but I’ve a ratha large heid.”). As we waited to hit our second shots on the 12th hole, a long par-5 that runs along the North Sea, H thrust his club toward the horizon and said that across the water somewhere lay Germany and the Netherlands. I teasingly mentioned to H that many scholars believe the Dutch, not the Scots, invented the first form of the game of golf. “Och, tha’ canna be troo,” said H, obviously insulted. As tribute to his heritage, he proceeded to advance his ball well up the fairway with a powerful, low, boring three-iron shot played under the wind.

In addition to beer carts, yardage markers were conspicuous by their absence on the links. Ian was flabbergasted, or “gob-smacked” as he called it, when I told him about some golf carts in the U.S. being outfitted with Global Positioning Systems which spit out exact yardages from anywhere on the course. On the whole, we Americans are so reliant on being fed an overabundance of information while playing golf that we have lost a certain amount of feel for the game. For example, on the 18th hole at Kingsbarns, with our alternate shot match on the line, I looked to my playing partner for some help on the distance of the second shot. Finding it impossible to judge distance by sight alone, Brian shrugged his shoulders and looked around for some nonexistent clue as to yardage. “Go with 4-iron,” he said uncertainly.

Predictably, my shot got caught in the wind and ended up in a narrow, stonewalled “burn” in front of the green. I recall reading an enchanting story about how the burn was originally built during the Bronze Age to carry water for agricultural use, but all I knew at the time was that the godforsaken ditch was flushing my Titleist Pro V1 out into the frigid waters of the North Sea. I felt sick. “Unlucky,” said Scotsman Wee Ronnie (anyone under 5’8” in height apparently gets the “Wee” moniker) without much sympathy. I replied with a very unsportsman-like expression, laced with enough American colloquialisms to leave Ronnie more confused than offended (“Did ya juist say somethin’ aboot ma Mither?”).

With the golf finally over (final score: Scotland 10 ½ points, USA 4 ½), we spent several hours rigorously engaged in another Scottish pursuit: drinking. In the pub after the matches, the Scottish team was awarded our own version of the Ryder Cup — a beautiful silver “Quaich.” It is a wide, shallow cup with ornate handles. The Quaich (derived from the Gaelic word "cuach" meaning shallow cup) was once the traditional visitor’s welcome cup used by proud clan chiefs in the Scottish Highlands.

As I watched the six members of the Scottish team celebrate their well-deserved victory by drinking single malt wiskey from the Quaich, I thought it ironic that, during the Celtic period in history, it is believed that the Druids filled a Quaich with blood from the hearts of sacrificed humans. In this case, it was the boys from the U.S.A. who were slaughtered. But as it was passed across the table to the Americans, I knew that the Quaich’s modern symbolism of shared love and partnership was more apropos. As I lifted it to my mouth to take a drink, I noticed an engraving on the side of the Quaich. “We’ll tak a cup o’kindness,” it read, and correctly attributed the line to 18th century Scottish poet Robert “Rabbie” Burns. The poem from which the verse is pulled is Auld Lang Syne: an ode to camaraderie, reunion, good memories, lasting friendship, and drinking. And so I concluded (as the captain of any losing team should) that our golf matches were not about winning or losing, but more about the experience.

“Cheers, lads,” said Ian. We all raised our pint glasses and someone offered a toast to a rematch in two years in the United States. The Americans immediately started plotting our revenge. We would pick a hot, humid location. No wind. Tall trees lining every fairway. Carts would be mandatory. The course would have lots of forced carries over water and railroad ties. The Scots would be completely out of their element. I can hardly wait.