Jason Dufner and Tiger Woods during a practice round Wednesday. Getty Images

By the traditions of the British Open, the Old Course at St. Andrews is the prom queen, all taffeta and golden curls. But Muirfield, the site of this year's championship and 15 others before it, is the dark-eyed femme fatale, a quietly confident dazzler with a distinctive style and more than a hint of danger.

What makes this course distinct from other Open layouts is the interplay between its circular design and the notorious Scottish winds that can howl like the Monster of Glamis, turning a peaceful walk along the coastal lowlands into a harrowing struggle to remain upright.

On most courses in that part of the world, whipping winds essentially create two different courses in one. Since the layouts are designed in the classic out-and-back format, the first nine holes head basically in one direction, and the next nine head back toward the clubhouse the other way. If the wind is with you on the front nine, it's against you on the back.

Muirfield, set on Scotland's eastern coast, is perfectly located to endure the brunt of the region's erratic weather. The direction of play changes every few holes, forcing players to measure what seems like a constantly shifting wind—even on those days when it's only coming from one direction. And therein lies the secret to the mysteriousness of Muirfield: It seems like an open, what-you-see-is-what-you-get course nearly devoid of any of the quirks, awkward doglegs and oddly-placed pot-bunkers that characterize so many of the other courses in the British Open rotation. But you'd better not drop your guard.

"If the wind blows there, my god, you can lose your dog," said David Feherty, the Golf Channel commentator and former pro. "Every hole it seems like you're going into a different direction. With the other courses you get into a rhythm. You know you're left-to-right and upwind out and right-to-left and downwind back," he said. "At Muirfield you're constantly getting something different. It's left-to-right, then right-to-left, then downwind, then you don't know where the hell it's coming from, and then it disappears because there's a dune that blocks it."

Built on an old horse-racing course, Muirfield follows a circle around the circumference of the course through the front nine, turns at its clubhouse, then zigs and zags its way through the middle of the circle on the back. Ron Whitten, senior editor for architecture at Golf Digest, calls Muirfield, whose membership dates to 1744, "an old club with a relatively modern routing. Other Open sites are old clubs with old 19th century routings."

For now, the forecast is for a rather calm weekend at Muirfield, with winds hovering around 10 miles per hour. The prevailing wind is from the West, though it's likely to shift several times throughout the tournament, according to forecasts. Not that the golf gods have any particular respect for weather forecasts, particularly Scottish ones. Tiger Woods learned this in 2002 when a calm morning whipped into an angry, rainy, biting cold from the Northeast during his third round. He shot an 81 and lost his best chance at a grand slam. Woods shot a 65 the next day, but the round became an object lesson in the need for constant adjustment at Muirfield.

"You can't just hit one way," Woods said Tuesday. "You have to shape it both ways and really control the shots. Because you're not playing, like you are at St. Andrews, out and back, or Troon. You're playing almost in kind of a circle, in a sense, because you've got so many different angles."

Shifting wind may be the most beguiling of conditions for golfers. It gets inside the heads of even the best golfers and doesn't leave. Even Ben Hogan preferred to practice almost exclusively with a right-to-left wind hitting him in the chest as he stood over his ball. "Most right-handers can barely play in a left-to-right wind," said Paul Azinger, the ESPN analyst who bogeyed his way to a second-place finish at Muirfield in 1987. "And a lot of the players today hit such a spinny ball so that it tends to get up in the wind and that can be trouble. This is a course where it seems like more tournaments seem to be lost rather than won."

Veterans of Muirfield say the changing wind patterns require a rare steeliness, which may be one of the reasons Muirfield's champions list—Harry Vardon, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo, Ernie Els—is as impressive as any in golf. It's worth noting that Nicklaus didn't name his home course in Ohio "St. Andrews west" but rather "Muirfield Village."

Conquering this course requires a seemingly counter-intuitive approach. The formula for success isn't to try to pound the ball through the wind. "You have to hit a lot of club and hit it soft, because the harder you hit it the more it will spin, and the harder it is to control," Feherty said. "It's like playing the game in miniature and at a lower speed. Eventually you realize everyone will suck it up out there, so it's a matter of making a bogey when the other guy makes double."

Write to Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com