There is a particular kind of quiet on the western edge of the St Andrews links, out past the Old, the New and the Jubilee, where the crowds thin and the estuary begins to make itself felt. This is where the Eden Course lives, a links that carries itself like a younger sibling who knows exactly how good it is and sees no reason to shout about it. It was born of overflow. In the early 1910s the town was overrun with visiting golfers, and three links could no longer hold them all. After complex negotiations with the landowner, James Cheape, the R&A member Harry Colt was commissioned to create a fourth course, and in 1914 he designed the Eden. Colt preferred strategy to punishment. He set questions rather than traps, used what the land already offered, and built greens with enough contour to shed water and enough nerve to unsettle a putter. Those putting surfaces remain the soul of the place, boldly moved and full of complex subtleties, rivals to the sacred ground next door and among the most undulating on all the links. Colt let the land lead. He half buried old field boundary walls into the design so the routing flows rather than imposes, and he set tees and greens around two prominent dunes that you play toward and away from again and again. Deep pot bunkers are scattered liberally, waiting for the errant drive or the wandering approach. The fairways are mostly generous, but out of bounds hovers over many holes. Slice your tee shot on the 417-yard 3rd and you will find yourself on the Old Course, where the marshals will soon notice that you have gate-crashed the tourist track. At 6,112 yards and par 70, the Eden looks like one of the rare chances to go low in St Andrews, and in a sense it is. But the sloping greens, the humps and hollows, and the bunkers placed with real intent ask for sharp approach play and a good plan. The 144-yard 5th is the purest example: a two-tiered green with a seven-foot slope between the levels, a test for the very best of putters. A handful of fine short par fours run along the estuary, and the four par threes form a wonderful quartet. Then comes the course's argument with itself. Sometime in the 1980s, in the middle of that decade or toward its end, Donald Steel reworked the opening and closing holes so that practice facilities and the tented village for The Open could find room. In 1985 he added a pond that the 350-yard 14th and the 170-yard 15th now play around, the only inland water hazard on any of the links. The pair may be worth lingering over, or they may be the weakest two holes in the whole town, blemishes at the far end of an otherwise natural course. Eleven of Colt's holes survive: the 2nd through the 9th, the 11th, the 13th, and the current first green, which was once his par-three 3rd. Walk off the last green and the difference in quality may announce itself. The toughest hole is the 432-yard 17th, bending along the curve of the old railway line with out of bounds to the right. You aim at the most distant visible bunker, and the relatively deep green leaves little room between the sand on the left and the boundary on the right. In 1919 the Eden hosted its first major event, drawing JH Taylor, James Braid, Harry Vardon and Alister MacKenzie. MacKenzie called it second only to the Old Course in all of Scotland. The annual Eden Tournament still endures as a major event for British amateurs, and afterward the new Eden and Strathtyrum Clubhouse offers a quiet respite from the crowds gathered near the Old.