Old Tee Plaque sold in 2005

King James IV, who lifted the ban on golf in 1502 by buying his own first (official) set of clubs in Perth, is also recording as buying clubs from St Andrews in 1506 while he was at Falkland Palace nearby; we know this because the Lord High Treasurer noted and compared the prices of clubs and balls at each venue.

In 1552, Archbishop John Hamilton of St Andrews was given a charter to establish a rabbit warren on the links. The Charter confirmed the rights of the local populace to play golf on the links at St Andrews and these rights were confirmed in subsequent local and royal charters. In 1574 we have the record of golfing ‘club and balls’ in James Melville’s diaries; Melville was a student in St Andrews from 1569 to 1574 and his father was Minister in Maryton, near Montrose, where he was taught golf at school. He certainly had his club and balls while at St Andrews.

By 1583, as elsewhere in Scotland, the Kirk (Church) was taking miscreants in St Andrews to task for playing on the ‘golf fields’ on the Sabbath (Sunday).

In 1691, there is an important reference to the pre-eminence of St Andrews in golf by Alexander Munro, Regent at St Andrews University.  In a letter of 27th April 1691 to his friend, the Advocate (Barrister) John Mackenzie of Devline in Perthshire, he refers to St Andrews as the ‘metropolis of Golfing’. With the letter, he sent him 'ane sett of Golfe-Clubs  consisting of three, viz. an play club, ane Scrapper, and ane tin fac’d club’(all sic).  This set would have been a driving wood, a lofting wood and an iron club.  He also sent him 'ane Dozen of Golfe balls.' (An and ane are the Scots 'one')

We do not know exactly when or how the current layout of the Old Course at St Andrews developed, but by 1764 St Andrews consisted of twelve holes, ten of which were played twice, making a round of twenty-two holes in all. The course wends its way ‘out’ along the coast, and then turns back ‘in’ to the clubhouse.
 

In 1764, the ‘Captain and Gentlemen Golfers present’ of the club now known as the Royal and Ancient decided the first four holes, which were also the last four holes, were too short and converted them into two holes to be played ‘in the same way as presently marked out’, thus creating an eighteen-hole golf course. It was actually ten holes, of which eight were played twice. The signatory on the minute for this was William St Clair of Roslin, four times captain of both the St Andrews and Leith golf clubs. The tee for the second hole shown on the old tee plaque at the top of the page was therefore once the tee for the third hole, or would have been, if they had had teeing grounds in those days. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, they simply tee’d up within two or four club's length of the previous hole.

Competing uses for the St Andrew's Links created friction between the golfers and others. The Town Council’s financial difficulties resulted in the links being sold in 1799 to the commercial rabbit breeders Charles and Cathcart Dempster, but in 1805 the local inhabitants won the right to kill the rabbits. For sixteen years the ‘Rabbit Wars’ were waged over the links until, in 1821, James Cheape of Strathtyrum bought the links for the golfers and laid the foundations of St Andrews’ golfing prosperity.

Because the middle holes on the Old Course were played in both directions, it meant that golfers might often be waiting, not just for the group in front to clear the green, as today, but also for a party playing in the opposite direction to do the same. From 1832, there were moves to increase the size of the greens, and ultimately to put two holes in every green. It is not certain when this was started or completed, but it is believed to have been finished for the Spring Meeting of May 1857, reported in the Fifeshire Journal. By using white and red colour flags for the ‘out’ and ‘in’ holes, golfers could identify to which hole they should be playing on the double greens. The course was played in the clockwise direction in this period.

St Andrews R&A Clubhouse

The present Royal and Ancient clubhouse was begun in 1854 and is seen in the picture above with snow on the eighteenth hole. Golf was a winter game until the middle of the 19th Century, when mechanical grass cutters allowed play in the summer as well. With the increased prosperity of the Victorian times and the expansion of the railways, golf tourism took hold in Britain.

In 1863, Old Tom Morris was appointed greenkeeper of the links by the R&A.  Old Tom was a St Andrew's man who had studied under another great St Andrew's golfer, Allan Robertson, before Tom had been appointed Keeper of Greens at Prestwick. Robertson died in 1859, and Old Tom was induced to return to St Andrews in 1863.  He devised the present layout of the Old Course by separating the green of the first/seventeenth holes, creating separate teeing areas and changing the direction of play from clockwise to the present anti-clockwise.

James Cheape subsequently sold the Links in 1893 to the Royal and Ancient Club, who bid £5000, which was £500 more than the Town Council. However, the Council successfully petitioned Parliament to keep the Links in common ownership. Ultimately, after many Acts of Parliament, the Links were taken over by the Links Trust who run it today.

Old Course Hole 9 Chuck wagon at the turn

There are now five other courses on the Links. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club built the New Course in 1895, designed by Old Tom Morris as well as the Jubilee course, which was opened with 12 holes in 1897 and named in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee that took place that year. It was extended to 18 holes in 1905. The Eden Course was opened in 1914 and the Strathtyrum in 1993. The nine-hole Balgrove course, designed for beginners and children, was first created in 1972, but substantially remodelled in 1993, when the Strathtyrum was completed. The latter three courses are built largely on land purchased at various times from the Strathtyrum estate of the Cheape family. There is a map of the layout of the courses at Accommodation at St Andrews.

All six public Links courses, including the Old Course, are owned and operated by the St Andrews Links Trust. More information on how to play the Links courses can be obtained from the official website of the St Andrew’s Links Trust. The Trust has two Links Clubhouses, open to the public, and strives to make it easy as possible for visitors to play when they want.

More details of the origin of the eighteen hole round.

Website of Strathtyrum House

Accommodation at St Andrews