There are a few golf courses like no other on this planet that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Cruden Bay is one of them. A 30-minute drive from Aberdeen, in the northeast of the country, this course designed in 1899 by Tom Morris and Archie Simpson (and renovated in 1920 by Tom Simpson and Herbert Fowler) is a real gem. What a setting! Here, the slightest divot is a scar. We almost want to play every stroke on a tee so as not to scratch the beautiful. In Cruden Bay, a dozen or so natural dunes, sometimes as tall as a 10-story building, overlook gibbous fairways, delicately drawn.

The start of hole 9 is unanimously considered the most beautiful in Scotland. The panorama is breathtaking with a full view of the course and the backdrop of Slains Castle, which is said to have inspired Bram Stoker for the writing of Dracula. To starboard, the North Sea hums a haunting song and makes the larks dance as you take your driver out of the bag.

To tell the truth, the magic operates from hole n ° 1 on this par 70. Joe, the warm marshall, gives you some advice, in particular on how to approach this first fairway, with its out of bounds on the left and his herd of gorse on the right. Cruden Bay is the pure Scottish links. Each hole gives off a special atmosphere and never tells the same story. The quartet 3–4-5-6 guarantees you a thrill that lasts almost an hour. Hole n ° 3, a short blind par 4 where anything is possible, takes you near the old fishing village of Port Errol. Dotted with bumps, the 4 is a long par 3 of white balls (196 yards for whites against 142 yards for yellows), which is played headwind. Very close to here, the castle of Slains, built at the end of the XVI^e century by Jacques 1^er of England while King of Scotland, seems to be counting the blows. Because the over here is a good performance.

Hole 5 is a splendor of par 4 which plunges towards the green and the sea, below. The following par 5 is of the same ilk, with a small channel slyly placed upstream of the green to calm the more reckless who imagine they can attack the flag from the 2^e stroke. In fact, all the holes stand out at Cruden Bay and seem to follow the natural curves of its rugged coastline. Besides the 9, from which one would almost want to hit a dozen balls, holes 10 and 12 evoke a painting by Jean-Baptiste Corot, who sketched in his time picturesque landscapes. The 13 is a par 5 swaying along the North Sea, the 14 and 15 are played blind before revealing - as if we were suddenly drawing a curtain - a bewitching landscape. As for the 16, which is attacked from above, it is one of the most beautiful par 3s in Scotland with the ruins of Slains Castle on the horizon.

We come out of the green of the 18 intoxicated by this delicious feeling of having lived one of the most beautiful days of golf of our existence. Because as the legendary Tom Watson confides: "Cruden Bay is a gem, a real links, a real pleasure ..." Amen.

Frank Crudo