For a Links course, in Open week, it was remarkably benign: still to the point of being faintly eerie, with greens holding uncharacteristically well, and the opportunity for shot making certainly there. It made for surprisingly pleasant golf, particularly if you're aware just how revolting Scottish weather can be ? and it meant that the opening round of my Scottish golf tour was all the memorable. Not quite as memorable as Tom Watson's, though, an hour down the coast, as pensioners everywhere smiled wryly at the value of experience when negotiating golf's most idiosyncratic layout.

Links golf is the game's oldest, truest test, the vagaries of weather and rolling fairways demanding skills that bright green manicured estates and resort courses simply never do. The art of the bump and run, of reading the fairway as you usually would a green, of leaving driver in the bag alongside ego and managing club selection with studied restraint, is all part of playing the open courses that represent the soul of golf ? which is why, the occasional blinkered American aside, golf's best trek annually to Britain for the Open Championship, knowing full well that howling gales, biting rain and uncompromising layouts are the Open's natural home.

Yesterday at Nairn was my first Scottish links experience and the introduction couldn't have been gentler: blue skies (an annual occurrence in the north of Scotland), offset by the briefest hints of drizzle, and no breeze to speak of. But as you learn very, very quickly with links golf, conditions are but one test, and as Watson illustrated with such poise and authority on day one at Turnberry, it's course management that's the real challenge. The fairways all appear in need of ironing, shots landing and then bouncing off at right angles from the middle of the fairway not uncommon, and while loft and spin do play a role in approaching greens, the amateur with a mid-iron or more will watch all too often as a great strike screams past the pin, and into some attendant gorse beyond the fringe.

Where the amateur golfer has the nastiest of challenges, however, is in the type of bunkers made most famous by the Road Hole at St. Andrew's (I'm playing there on Monday, and already the nerves are creeping in). Twice yesterday I was eye level to the green, wedge open at an absurd angle in a wildly optimistic attempt to get the golf to rise vertically, and then loop over the edge and onto the green. Retief Goosen's shot out of the bunker yesterday defied several laws of physics, as you'd know if you'd seen it; had you been negotiating similar tests earlier in the day (with slightly different results), you'd have been in even greater awe at the Goose's astonishing escape from a Scottish trap.

But then Goose has been playing links golf long enough to appreciate the challenges, and know the differences between golf in Scotland and golf in South Africa. The driver rules unashamedly in South Africa, bunkers are the launch pad to get up and down, and when you hire a caddie in South Africa, you don't have him thank you at the end of 18 holes, get into his Mercedes E class, and drive home... Having a retired local on the bag yesterday was a crucial part of the Scottish experience, and inside knowledge on the course was vital in negotiating an unknown layout. Again, parallels with Turnberry on day one.

Whether a 59-year-old Watson can keep his momentum going for four days is the Open's defining question thus far (what Tiger will do sits just behind); the weather will be crucial here, and early on a Friday morning in Scotland, looking out of the window of Drummuir Castle, conditions are looking more typically Scottish. Turnberry can only get tougher from here, and Watson's intimate knowledge of the course and the shot making required to negotiate it, will stand him in good stead, as it will the more senior amongst his challengers.

Goosen is amongst those challengers, one of four South Africans just three back from the cigar-wielding Miguel Angel Jimenez, and as George, my Mercedes-driving caddie confirmed admiringly, Goose was hitting the ball exceptionally last week at the Scottish Open. I've already told Sterne that I'll be good to pass on some links tips on Sunday morning for the final round, by which time I'll have Pitlochry and Kingsbarns under the belt, and it would end a great week to have a South African collecting the Claret Jug; on day one's evidence, it'll be golf's old guard taking a stand this week in Scotland, and giving the new rush of blood a salient lesson in just how to approach the greatest test the game of golf has to offer. A 59-year-old American to win a Major? On a links course in Scotland, it's a possibility that speaks volumes for the game.