Fairway Freeware Unlimited

     This JNSE version of Royal St. George's Golf Course in
Sandwich, England was produced by Brent Blackburn and myself
under the facetious business name of Fairway Freeware,
Unlimited, and is intended to be distributed free and
without any limitations to anyone who can say Fairway
Freeware ten times as fast as you can without tripping over
your tongue.  All other restrictions apply.
     Brent did the groundwork, the land plot, and consulted
on all phases of the production.  I contributed the
background and the objects and acted in the capacity of
editor for the "official version."
     In addition to the "official version," Brent has
produced an "underground version"  of the course, with an
altered palette instead of grass and sand hill objects.  His
version will not be generally released at this time, but
serious collectors and links freaks may contact Brent and
make arrangements to obtain it privately.  (His address and
telephone number are printed in the text file of his
haunting version of Nairn, available under the file name of
Nairn.zip on your friendly neighborhood bulletin board.)

                         The Course

     There are at least two points of comparison between
Royal St. George's and the Old Course at St. Andrews.  Both
courses are named after the patron saint of their respective
countries, and each is the oldest course in its country to
be included in the current British Open Rotation.  There is
a third similarity, of course, in that both are links, but
they are very different types of links.  St. Andrews has an
"out and back" routing; St. George's changes direction with
almost every hole.  But more significantly, St. Andrews is
generally flat, while St. George's is a links of mountainous
sand hills.  Only Birkdale has dunes to rival St. George's,
but Birkdale's design is entirely different and more modern
in concept, the fairways themselves routed between the
dunes, and being quite flat, whereas at Royal St. George's,
it has been observed that there is only one flat section of
one fairway on the entire course.
     Royal St. George's is a joyful relic from the days when
hitting a golf ball over a towering mound of grassy dunes
was considered to be the greatest thrill the game had to
offer.  It was harder to do back then, the ball not
travelling as far as it does nowadays, and as we have our
long carries over water and our island greens to mark modern
courses with distinction, in those days courses had their
Alps and their Himalayas.  (It should be noted, however,
that the railroad ties which characterize many island green
designs here have been in use in the British Isles for over
a hundred years, referred to there as railroad sleepers, and
used to shore up the sides of giant bunkers long before
their use as bulkheads was ever thought of in this country.)
     Number 4 at Royal St. George's is a perfect example of
the heroic links design philosophy.  From the tee, right in
the middle of what ought to be the fairway, just about where
the landing area of your drive might be, are visible instead
two jutting peaks of sand and rough and railroad sleepers,
40 feet tall, blotting out the view of what lies beyond.
For the cautious, there is a circuitous route around them to
the left, but the obvious invitation to the daring is to
launch your drive into orbit over the top, the consequences
of failure, however, being every bit as extreme as any water
hazard.  The sleepers are higher than a man's head, and
anyone would think twice before trying to blast out over
them.  There is at least one documented case where a golfer
did a double backwards somersault in the attempt to
extricate his ball from this bunker, after which he resigned
his match, obviously concluding that the task was
impossible.
     The course has been modernized over the years through
the elimination of some blind shots, and other
"improvements," otherwise it would not be part of the Open
rotation at all, but it is still the closest remaining
course in spirit to Prestwick, the original, and for the
first 12 years the only venue for the Open Championship, and
thus, notwithstanding St. Andrews' venerable claims, the
most classic course on which the British Open is presently
contested.
     Apparently, it is also the most difficult.  Only once
has par of 280 been broken in an Open Championship here, by
the somewhat obscure Bill Rogers in 1981, and a record
certain never to be broken, the all-time high 72-hole total
of 326 in the Open was set at Royal St. George's in 1894 by
J. H. Taylor.  Jack Nicklaus had an 83 in the opening round
in '81, his worst performance ever in a major championship.
It is not that the course is uniformly and consistently
difficult.  Low scores and high scores seem to be equally
common.  Nicklaus followed his 83 with a 66, and made the
cut, and until Nick Faldo burned up Muirfield in 64-66=130
last year, the record low score for the first 36 holes of
the Open was Henry Cotton's 67-65=132 in 1934 at Royal St.
George's.  Surely the weather is a major contributor to the
range of scores shot there, but St. George's first line of
defense is probably its classic, if not antique design.  It
is difficult for a golfer to remain in control of his game.
There are still blind shots to fairways which, if they could
be seen, would resemble rumpled sheets on unmade beds.  The
ball takes funny bounces, sometimes not so funny.  The lies,
though the quality of the turf is legendary, can (and often
do) involve one foot being one foot below the other foot.
Luck becomes a factor.

                          Credits

     I would like to especially thank Brent, who basically
created the course, and then cheerfully turned his work over
to me to revise and populate with objects as I wished, never
once complaining, and graciously allowing me the final word
in questions of design.
     Thanks also to Roger Johnson, who got Brent and me
together; to Howie Maurer, a real golf course architect, for
his support of computer golf course design in general, and
for the pages on Royal St. George's from his Viewer's Guide
which he sent to us; and to everyone on Prodigy and
Compuserve who encouraged the project at its inception.
     None of the objects are actually borrowed, but the idea
of creating object sand hills was suggested to me by Gene
Rodriguez's "rocks" on Furnace Springs and Joe Blankenship's
volcanic outcroppings on Firecreek.
     The sources of information consulted were various,
including:  The 1993 TV Viewer's Guide; The World Atlas of
Golf; The Random House International Encyclopedia of Golf;
Classic Golf Links of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland;
The Golf Courses of the British Isles; Great Golf Courses of
the World; Grand Slam Golf; The Majors Series; some back
issues of Sports Illustrated; various golf magazines, past
and present; and a phone call one morning (evening their
time) to Sandwich, England, at which time I was fortunate
enough to talk to the secretary of the club, from whom I
received limited but useful information about the views of
Pegwell Bay.

                         ----:----

     This has been a particularly educational project for
me, and I hope that besides providing pleasure to those who
play the course, it will awaken an interest in British links
courses, of which there are many more of outstanding quality
than the few that are widely known for their choice as sites
of the British Open, in lovers of golf who may not yet be
familiar with them.  An excellent introduction to these
courses is Donald Steel's Classic Golf Links of England,
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, which is currently available,
and a book which expresses the timeless spirit of golf, The
Golf Courses of the British Isles, by Bernard Darwin, first
published in 1910, but currently available in a beautiful,
if somewhat expensive reprint.  Darwin is a more than
excellent writer, and the many water color illustrations by
Harry Rowntree are extraordinary.
     

                                     -- Revery
                                        July, 1993