On Wednesday evening ahead of his first round, 11 time World Champion Surfer Kelly Slater took to the East Sands in St Andrews for a sunset surf, surprising some shocked students.
The beauty of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is that you might just catch a World Champion Surfer making the most of a beautiful evening at the home of golf.
That was the case for some students, who were also surfing, at the East Sands beach, known to surfers for good waves.
Slater had paddled up to a group of students surfing, and caught waves alongside them.
"He came over and whispered in my ear and whispered 'there's a goat in the water', and I didn't quite believe him," said one student.
"Being able to chat to Kelly in the line up, even share some waves," said another, who knew he was in town but was amazed at their interaction. "Unbelievable, I can't believe it."
Afterwards, Slater took pictures with the students, and spoke about how nice it was to be surfing in Scotland as he prepared to play in his eighth Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Thursday.
"It's nice to get a wave here in Scotland," said Slater. "I was saynig I couldn't feel my feet, not because it was so cold but because I walked golf all day."
Slater, who is playing alongside Rafa Cabrera Bello this week, has a lot of love for this event, which he called the 'best pro-am in the world' earlier in the week.
"I've always said it's the best pro-am in the world," he told the DP World Tour on Wednesday afternooon.
"You feel really a part of the tournament as an amateur. A lot of them are kind of, it feels like a coming together of a lot of friends that have had many years in the golf world and as an amateur it's really fun because you feel so enmeshed in like the whole all the events and stuff and there's a lot of pros and amateurs that have played together for a long time so there's a good camaraderie there."
While Slater has not yet lifted the trophy in the team event, he says some of his most memorable moments came in his first two years of coming to St Andrews, partnering the winner both times.
"Well it was my first two years here I played in 09 and then again I skipped a couple years and then came back a couple years later and my first two years playing my pro won the tournament outright. I was with Simon Dyson, who I didn't even know Simon's name at the time and then he just played out of his mind and on the final day I think he shot maybe 5 under on the front nine and one or two under on the back. We weres ahead of Rory and he got a little upset because Rory hit into us, and he starts yelling. I said, Hey, just calm down. He's doing that to make you mad, man. You're winning, win this tournament, and laugh and yell at him afterwards. I said, But then you'll be laughing at him, so don't worry about it."
"That was cool, and then I played with Thorbjorn Olesen a couple of years later, and he won, and I said, on the final hole, I go on the 18th, when you putt out and win this thing, I'm going to give you a big chest bump. And he's like, what? I'm like, yeah, get ready for it. So that was kind of fun.
"So then I came back the next year and I'm sitting at breakfast and I think Kaymer, one of those guys, came up to me and said, I need to play with you. Your pro always wins. So I kind of had this thing. I should have quit after two. I haven't made the cut since."
