You find Muirfield the way you might find a private letter: at the end of a lane off the main road in Gullane, behind a gate that has been photographed again and again. Nothing announces itself. There is no cliff, no crashing surf, no grand swoop of land. The Firth of Forth sits off in the distance, polite and grey, as if it has been asked not to interrupt. A first-time visitor may look out over it and wonder what all the reverence is for. That is the beginning of the seduction. The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers brought its long memory here. Its written records reach back to 1744, and it gave the game its original 13 rules. It played at Leith Links for nearly a century before moving to Musselburgh Old in 1836, and then out again to this quiet stretch of East Lothian. Crowding may have pushed them, but the ground must have pulled. This is pure linksland, bouncy and fast and firm. On it, a bunker that looks small plays large and menacing. A subtle hump matters more than it should. A pin position changes the whole question of the approach, and distance control becomes both a pleasure and a reckoning. The course is always some degree of firm, so the architecture speaks from the green all the way back to the tee. Old Tom Morris guided the first course, which opened in 1891. Then Harry Colt came to overhaul it, setting out in 1923 and working new land the club had bought, and the course he revamped by 1925 carried one of the most influential routings golf has known. The front nine runs clockwise around the outside and comes home to the clubhouse. The back nine turns counterclockwise, winding through the interior. It refuses the old out-and-in habit of the links. Because the holes keep quietly changing direction, the wind keeps changing its mind about you, helping, hurting, crossing, and at a seaside place with a prevailing westerly, that is no small thing. There is not a bad hole in the lot. Tom Simpson developed the course further in the following decade, and the 13th is his, an uphill par 3 with a rare bit of raised drama on otherwise modest ground. In this century, Martin Hawtree has refined the work. Muirfield can be cruel. The fescue rough is thick for a links, swelling or thinning with the rain, and the wilder player will meet it often. It is a deliberate choice, and it keeps people arguing. The bunkers are true hazards, supremely penal, and the most famous of them, the doughnut right of the 18th green, sits under the gaze of the clubhouse. The club keeps watch over a great deal: the legendary lunch, a devotion to foursomes, tradition so deep that some call it too much. The move to Gullane brought the Open from Musselburgh, and the first came right away in 1892. Only Prestwick and the Old Course have hosted more. The champions read like a hymn: Vardon, Braid, Hagen, Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Faldo, Els, Mickelson. In recent years its place as an Open host was put on hold, at first over the absence of women members. After controversy and too much wrangling, the Honourable Company voted in 2017 to admit women, and the Women's Open came in 2022. There are questions about whether the grounds can hold vast crowds, yet the expectation remains that the Open will return one day. Muirfield may look ordinary at first glance. Play it, and it becomes something else entirely, fun and punishing, proof that when the turf and the routing are this good, the view hardly matters at all.