Second Thoughts: The trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, was a whirlwind of anticipation, disaster, renewed hope — and that was just at the airport.
EDINBURGH, Scotland — My golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, was supposed to be an adventure. But the adventure wasn’t supposed to start at the airport.
When we got to San Francisco International on Saturday, my father and I were ready for a day and a half of travel, hoping to arrive Sunday night at St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf, for two days on the Old Course and one more on the much-newer Jubilee Course (built in 1897). If only.
Our departure to London Heathrow Airport was delayed three hours, which would mean we’d have to get a new connecting flight from London to Edinburgh and make new travel arrangements from there to St. Andrews. At that point, we felt fortunate we weren’t on the next flight to London, as those folks were delayed overnight.
We waved goodbye to our golf clubs as they were checked at San Francisco, headed for the Black Hole of Baggage that is Heathrow’s Terminal 5, the London home of British Airways.
 A bit about Terminal 5. Since it opened about two weeks ago, British Air has “temporarily misplaced” more than 30,000 items of luggage, a count that now includes two sets of golf clubs from California. Nearly six days after checking our clubs with the airline, we still have no idea where our clubs are. Nor does British Airways.
We didn’t know our clubs’ fate, however, as our plane sat an extra hour on the tarmac both in S.F. and in London, which meant we missed our new connecting flight to Edinburgh. The airline gave our seats away, even though we made it to the departure gate before our scheduled second flight took off.
So that left us wandering through Terminal 5 until British Airways told us and the several hundred other stranded passengers to go home. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones separated from our baggage and our destination.
James White, a reporter from European wire service INS News, interviewed me about the Terminal 5 debacle — described by pilots and employees as “absolute chaos” — as people settled in for a night at the airport.
My father and I and a handful of other disgruntled passengers finally cornered a British Air employee and booked a 6:50 a.m. flight for the next morning, in hopes of still making our Monday afternoon tee time. Then we went to a London hotel for a quick sleep.
 We woke at 4 a.m. and dashed to the airport. Of course, our flight had been canceled. We stood in a two-hour queue at the British Air Customer Disservice counter (there was no one manning the counter for quite a while) to get another flight — our fourth scheduled connecter in two days.
We weren’t going to make our first tee time at the Old Course.
Downcast, we trudged again through Heathrow to wait for our next flight and called St. Andrews Links to tell them we wouldn’t make it.
That’s when Suzy stepped in.
A reservations worker at the golf course, she earned Hero of the Trip honors by making sure that we would play the Old Course on Tuesday and Wednesday. (My girlfriend earned runner-up hero honors by looking up possible alternate means of travel for us.) For the first time since the trip started, my father and I had hope.
But as San Francisco Giants fans, we know hope was made to be dashed. So we weren’t truly excited until we were dropped off at St. Andrews several hours later.
Waking up on Day 4 of our travels, the first full day actually at our destination, it was clear that something finally went right. We had the best room in the hotel — the large bay window faced the North Sea and the sparkling West Sands beach. We could even see the first tee of the Old Course, only 150 yards away.
One striking thing about St. Andrews is the inseparability of the golf course and town. People walk along the Old Course boundaries and cheer good shots, cars drive across the first and 18th fairways on a road that’s in play, and the course is closed on Sundays so residents and tourists can use it for weekend strolls.
It’s been there so long (since the 1400s) that it’s the soul of the city. Remove the course from St. Andrews, and it’s St. Andrews no longer.
So it was with great reverence and excitement that we stepped with rented clubs to the first tee in front of the Royal & Ancient Clubhouse on Tuesday and Wednesday, and with exhilaration that we strode up the 18th fairway, just like Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods in years past (with scores that were much, much higher).
It’s true that if you love golf and history, playing the Old Course is an unrivaled treat. And the 3-over-par 39 I carded on the back nine the first day, parring the daunting final four holes, bordered on a spiritual experience. Neil, my caddie for two days, was a particular helpand joy, guiding me around 6-foot deep bunkers that have snared wayward shots for centuries.
It was an added bonus that the St. Andrews Links starters knew my dad and me by name when we checked in to play — “Oh, the Terminal 5 guys,” they said.
Yeah, freakin’ Terminal 5, where we head back tomorrow (Friday) in hopes of actually making it home and possibly finding what became of our clubs. If all goes well, I should be in Tracy before this column goes to print. But I’m not counting on anything going well that involves British Airways.
Even so, what started as the trip from hell ended up a far-too-short grand adventure. And I can’t wait to do it again.
• To contact Jon Mendelson about his weekly column, call 830-4231 or e-mail
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