St Andrews Confidential
“This is going to throw me to the lions. But I’m used to that, so here goes:
St Andrews bugs me!”
Set in its honey-coloured citadel overlooking the 1st and 18th holes of the Old Course, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews is, along with the USGA, the ruling body of golf.
Yup. The Auld Grey Toon, the Home of Golf, the sacred crucible of the game… is losing its appeal. This is purely the feelings of a jaded old Scotsman but...I’ve felt it creeping in for years and my last visit sealed it.
Over thirty-odd years, I’ve watched St Andrews change—and not entirely for the better. I cut my teeth in golf-travel writing and photography in the early ’90s when visitors to the Auld Toon fumbled with their shoe laces at the back of a rental car and a round on the Old Course was about the cost of a decent pub dinner. The place was humble, a wee Fife Toon and fairly amateur in its approach to golf and its itinerant tourists.
In the early 90s, the Links Trust’s communications team, all two of them headed by Peter Mason, pulled up outside my little Dundee flat to look through a stack of St Andrews transparencies for a new promotional brochure they were planning. The Old Course didn’t need flogging. It didn’t need branding. It simply was—and that was enough!
Winds of Change
Soon, there was a wind of change blowing across the Links—more of an uncomfortable draught than a gentle breeze. In an act that felt more West End than West Sands, the Links Trust inked a deal with Keith Prowse, a London theatrical ticketing agency (yes, a West End ticketing agency) to sell Old Course tee times to the highest bidders near and far.
“Locals bristled; traditionalists tut-tutted; R&A members rattled their teacups in protest. ”
Meanwhile, the Links Trust swiftly pocketed a tidy £5 million—money that not long after turned into a sparkling new ‘Links Clubhouse’ complete with cosy changing rooms, a gleaming gift shop and dining comforts that would have made the stern old club members raise a reluctantly approving eyebrow.
There was a new scent drifting across Grannie Clark’s Wynd and the Scores, and it wasn’t the smell of the North Sea—no salt tang, no seaweed musk. This was different. This was the aroma of opportunity, of commerce… of money!
Fifers throughout the Kingdom began to stir from their slumbers!
GOLF RUSH
“The Emperor may have had no clothes, but St Andrews had discovered a Savile Row tailor—and wasn’t above being stitched up!”
To my mind, the tipping point came in 2000 when two Californians pulled into a cow pasture a few miles south of St Andrews. During Fife photoshoots, I’d park my VW campervan on that very field, where Kingsbarns 1st green now stands. Back then, it was a Caravan Club Certified site, which basically meant ‘no toilet facilities’. The cows and I were perfectly happy as the sun set on the Firth of Forth.
The 14th at Kingsbarns.
Out of that muck and manure, Mark Parsinen, Art Dunkley and Kyle Philips (the architect) created Kingsbarns, a veritable “field of dreams” with all the attendant American standards of service, happy, smiling staff, and the PR razzmatazz. Americans loved it! The Magic Roundabout had begun!
It’s hard to believe that this sculpted linksland was once a cow field.
Supported by an army of golf tour operators and gullible journalists (like me) Kingsbarns was an overnight success, stepping into the limelight like Freddie Mercury. Praise gathered around it quickly, as though the place had simply been waiting for the world to take notice.
Based on that success, more new courses appeared in Fife and throughout Scotland, mostly funded by wealthy outsiders with deep pockets and transatlantic address books. A second golden age of Scottish golf development was taking place.
The Links Trust, once the sleepy guardian of tradition, joined the Klondyke and built the Castle course. The inventor of the nicotine patch slapped on two headland courses and a 200-bedroom hotel with manor houses overlooking the Auld Grey town, now Fairmont St Andrews.
The Auld Grey Toon was no longer a pilgrimage site for golfers—it was a brand.
ST ANDREWS TODAY
Don’t get me wrong, the Auld Grey Toon has never looked better. On a sunny Sunday, you can stroll at your leisure across the Old Course, take a picture on the Swiken Bridge or stroll the harbour wall with students flapping like bright red birds in the wind.
St Andrews University students take a Sunday stroll sporting the traditional red cloaks originally intended to keep them out of brothels - so I’ve been told…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Disney World!
But here’s the rub. That polish comes at a price. The Old Grey Toon now has a glitter that isn’t only golf. Where once the place wore its heritage lightly, it now monetises every blade of grass, every cobblestone, every tee time. Even the “Auld Grey Toon” nickname is slapped on coffee mugs and tote bags.
St Andrews may still be the centre of the golfing universe. But these days, it’s also starting to feel like the centre of a cash grab. And that’s the real hazard on the Old Course.
St Andrews Castle was first built around 1200 and the ruins we see today date back to 1571.
GOLF GALORE
Thanks partly to Kingsbarns success, there was a rash of new courses popping up everywhere along the Scottish coastline mostly backed by wealthy Americans looking to make their mark in the ‘Home of Golf’. And their target market was their fellow countrymen. Old, frosty, stoic Scottish attitudes quickly melted in the ‘warmth’ of the noticeable increase in visitor numbers and new money that came flowing in. Fife Council and the Links Trust even joined the bandwagon by adding to the Castle to the half dozen council-run St Andrews courses. We had entered a new era in Scottish golf and the ‘Auld Grey Toon’ never looked - nor felt - better!
PUB LIFE
Today, St Andrews is a singular island of culture and academia. Students come to St Andrews University from around the globe including the heir apparent, Prince William and it was here he met Katherine, now his wife. From the Dunvegan Pub to the old Cathedral and Castle, an informal stroll around the ‘Auld Grey Toon’ is always rewarding.
And of course golf. Upon this very soil, the game took hold, developed and flourished. Here you walk in the footsteps of all of the game’s greats from Old Tom to Tiger Woods and sample a truly unique programme that explores the fabulous heritage of Scotland’s past alongside its most enigmatic, renowned and redoubtable present.
