Many readers have questioned the curious nature of the golf course featured in all the works of fiction in the book. The reason is fairly simple: the Author related to at least twenty three holes during the construction of the stories, and it seemed easier (for the designer) simply to include all of them. Indeed the editing process included frequent rationalisation and normalising of the list, meaning that it could have been even larger. This scale doesn’t of course accord with the Author’s wishes expressed in ‘My Final Rant’ (page 247) where he expresses a wish for “shorter courses with fewer holes”, but he perhaps only thought of that after writing the fiction.
In the event, the construction of the course map was a complex task undertaken skillfully by Rob Anderson (the illustrator) using drafts provided by the designer. The construction of the scorecard provided a real challenge, where the stroke indexes for both Men and Women hopefully are accurate and reasonable.
Playing the course will be a little more difficult. Four courses are represented, with Murrayfield providing many, and Silverknowes a few. Mortonhall is mentioned once, as is Bruntsfield. We leave it to the reader to work out the details should they be interested. Organised ‘composite course visits’ are planned; it is expected that the course route will become a visitor shrine in the future.
The animals depicted are the choice of the Author. One example of elephant, lion, tiger, giraffe and camel (of the bactrian variety) are featured. Sadly, Edinburgh Zoo currently has only three of these species, namely the giraffe, lion and tiger. The Chimpanzee featured on the Silverfield logo is however on view.
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