On May 14, 1754, twenty-two ‘Noblemen and Gentlemen’, listed below, contributed to a silver club to be played for annually over the Links of St Andrews. The first winner was Baillie William Landale, a St Andrews' merchant, who became Captain for the year. The competition was initially open to all golfers, as had been that of the Leith golfers in 1744, whose rules the St Andrews' golfers used almost without change. Thus began the foremost club in both Scottish golf history and world golf in general.

On 4th May, 1766, the Society initiated regular play, with a decision to meet fortnightly at 11am at the Golf House, and to dine after the round at Bailie Glass’, for which they would each pay a Shilling, ‘the absent as well as the present’. (There were twenty shillings to a Scottish pound.) Like other clubs, they also used other taverns. On 28th May, 1773 the St Andrews golfers limited their annual competition to members of their own club, and those of the ‘Leith Society’, known today as The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. It marks a close association that these two clubs have had to this day. For example, William St Clair of Roslin, who organised the creation of eighteen holes at St Andrews in 1764, also laid the foundation stone for the Leith clubhouse in 1768. He was also Captain of both clubs four times.

One of the great traditions of the R&A is to retain the fiction of a competition to select their captain.  The Captain is selected and then entered in a competition in which he is the sole competitor and is declared the winner after his first drive from the first tee. The caddie who collects the ball is rewarded with a sovereign. This is called ‘playing in’. According to legend, all Captains have been played in this way, excepting only General Eisenhower in 1946 who refused to play from the first tee, in the light of the safety issues created by the enormous crowd that had gathered in his honour.

According to the Club Minutes on 7th September 1810, the Society authorised the Secretary “to employ tradesman to repair the Golfers’ Bridge on the Links, which is at present almost impassable, and to pay the expense thereof”. This was presumably the Swilcan Bridge below.

In 1834, King William IV agreed to become the Patron of the Club and the Society of St Andrews Golfers became The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. This was the second Royal accolade after Royal Perth Golf Club which received its title the year before.

The present clubhouse, seen above over the Swilcan Bridge, was begun in 1854, and has been augmented several times since.

Also in 1854, the Society began their merger with the Union Club of which Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair, who had recently returned from India, was a founding member. Sir Hugh went on to be Captain of the R&A 1856-57 and is credited with the creation of the double holes in the greens on the Old Course, which greatly assisted the flow of play and created a true 18 hole golf course.

In 1897, the Royal and Ancient were given sole control of the Rules of Golf Committee, a job which they have discharged for all areas outside of USA and Mexico ever since.

Alone among the oldest ten clubs, the R&A have always played over the same course, the Old Course at St Andrews, and also, unlike these other clubs, they do not own their own course(s). The R&A built the New Course in 1895, and paid for the maintenance of both the Old and New courses until the early 1950s, but handed these over to the St Andrews Links Trust as part of the very complicated and protracted arrangements that were reached on the rights of playing the courses for club members and local residents alike. This involved legal challenges and several Acts of Parliament, as the land was common land fur the benefit of the populace in general whose conflicting interests had to be resolved.

Official website of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews

More details of early golf at St Andrews

Accommodation at St Andrews