St Andrews Confidential
How the Home of Golf got up my nose—and then won me back.
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.
St Andrews was seriously bugging me. There, I’ve said it. The tense is important.
Over more than 30 years, I watched the Auld Grey Toon change for better or worse — and I was leaning towards the latter.
When I began photographing its golf courses in the early 1990s, visiting players changed their shoes behind hire cars. A round on the Old Course cost little more than a good fry-up and a couple of warm beers. The town had been putting up with visitors for over a thousand years and saw little reason to make any effort to add a few more.
The St Andrews Links Trust Communications Department was, at that time, run by two people, Peter Mason and a lovely lass whose name escapes me. One February morning, they descended on my little, one-bedroom pied-à-terre in Dundee’s West End to inspect my transparencies for their first promotional brochure.
Until then, the St Andrews Links hardly needed promoting. The Old Course simply was, the town had been ‘putting up’ with tourists since the Middle Ages, and nobody had thought any more about it.
FRINGED WITH GOLD
Then, in 1995, the Links Trust cut a ten-year, £5 million deal with Keith Prowse—a London West End theatre ticketing agency. 800 premium summer tee times were packaged and sold to the corporate and luxury-travel sector. A new Links Clubhouse rose on the back of that deal, positioned at a pivotal point between the six links courses. Hospitality slowly grew slicker, merchandise multiplied, and the words Home of Golf suddenly became valuable.
“Then St Andrews discovered what the rest of the world thought it was worth.”
THE KINGSBARNS EFFECT
The 14th at Kingsbarns. It took a matter of a few months to make this the headline act in Scotland.
Around the turn of the millennium, Kingsbarns arrived. I knew the site long before the golf course existed: a flat cow field that doubled as a Caravan Club Unlisted site (ie no facilities) where I parked my Volkswagen campervan whilst out photographing Fife golf courses.
Then Mark Parsinen, Art Dunkley and architect Kyle Phillips turned my parking spot into one of the greatest modern links in the world. Kingsbarns brought something new to the game—not simply a magnificent course, but a polished visitor experience delivered with all the American panache you could wish for.
It’s hard to believe that this sculpted linksland was once a cow field and campervan parking site
GAME CHANGER
Kingsbarns was an immediate success and a game changer. Across Scotland, the golf establishment stirred from its centuries-old slumber and, somewhat reluctantly, took notice.
New courses, clubhouses, hotels and golf businesses followed. St Andrews grew into a global destination, and standards improved enormously. Prices rose just as fast. Some of the old innocence vanished beneath branded knitwear, guaranteed tee-time packages and a creeping sense of self-importance.
By then, I was enough of an old-timer to resent the whole thing. To me, it felt like a sell-out. We Scots don’t always take kindly to change—particularly when someone else seems to be making a profit from it.
HOW IT WON ME BACK
This past May (2026) I returned with fellow golf writer Jeff Wallach expecting more evidence for the prosecution. Instead, St Andrews completely turned the case around and totally won me back.
The golf courses are still the headline act. Away from the links, students in scarlet gowns still stroll through the medieval streets. The cathedral ruins and castle still keep a wary eye on what’s going on… Fishing boats still shelter in the little harbour.
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…
And the pubs still do what they do best.
What surprised me most, though, was the standard of everything. We stayed at the Old Course Hotel and Rusacks, ate our way through the town and spent proper time in its pubs. The welcome felt assured; relaxed without feeling rehearsed or forced.
It struck me that St Andrews had learned to be a world-class destination while keeping all the good things that made it worth visiting in the first place.
Discover St Andrews and the Kingdom of Fife
St Andrews & The Kingdom of Fife brings together the essential courses, places to stay, local discoveries and practical advice needed to experience the Home of Golf properly—and to see far beyond the Old Course.
