Golfers tee-off on the 14th century old course at St. Andrews's Royal and Ancient Golf Club. Photograph © Catherine Karnow/CORBIS

St. Andrews by the Sea
By Reg Murphy

The Scots call it the auld grey toon of St. Andrews. It is either intellectual center or golf mecca. Or maybe both. Come along and decide for yourself.

On a Scottish hillside alongside the North Sea, about 30 miles northeast of Edinburgh, bright young scholars—some wearing flowing scarlet robes—attend St. Andrews University. There they learn the academic skills that make them linguists or actuaries, scientists or classical scholars. The university has a reputation for excellence. A golfer playing the venerated St. Andrews Old Course occasionally will look up from his ball on the first tee and see a cluster of those scholars strolling not more than a hundred yards in front of him.

The old cathedral up the road from the university is a landmark that augments the feeling of reserved scholarship. Indeed, it was the cathedral, the largest building in Scotland when it was built in the 12th century, that formed the nucleus of the town. St. Andrews students went on to form a significant portion of the clergy in the country. But the cathedral fell into disuse in the 1500s during the Reformation and was looted for building stone, leaving skeletal twin towers to look down on the cemetery below.

Within a few blocks of the university and the cathedral, wrote the former Associated Press golf writer Will Grimsley, "...there stands an old structure of smoky-gray stone. It is not much to look at.... Cold and aloof, the aged building stands alone—monumentally if not majestically—with the sea whipping up white caps at its back and in front of it a chain of dunes and ridges, knolls and hollows stretching like a thumb between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay."

This, as anyone who has ever picked up a putter can tell you, is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. The mecca of golf. The spot where men and women in bright-colored clothing have come since the 1400s to play the game. Where the game may not have been invented, but where it is held in higher esteem than anywhere else on earth.

St. Andrews is the (almost) perfect marriage of ancient town, gown, and golfing center. University students cross the course to reach the beach beyond. Locals walk the fairways with their leashed dogs. And where, every year, the R&A members play the butchers and bakers and clubmakers who compose the town team in the Town Match. Nobody has a monopoly on winning.

What makes this truly a delightful adventure for the visitor who has not brought golf clubs and shoes ("sticks and nails") is the mix of various human activities to be discovered here. The linksland where the Old Course (there are no fewer than six courses at St. Andrews) runs to the estuary of the River Eden is not merely a golf course; it is a gathering place. By tradition, these links courses (stretches of sod between gorse bushes and sand dunes near the sea) are a place where the citizens of the town can socialize with friends, or take the baby in a stroller for some (very) fresh air.

At the first and 18th hole of the Old Course, a public road called Granny Clark's Wynd runs directly across the fairways. Preparing to tee off on the first hole, the golfer must be particularly vigilant. It takes a measure of self-confidence to yell "Fore" and fire away, but course rules dictate that players must hit even when scholars and townsfolk, and perhaps unsuspecting tourists, are present on Granny's Wynd. Only when the course is roped off for the British Open Championship does the Wynd stay clear for golfers.

Beyond the historic Royal and Ancient Clubhouse and the first tee stretches a golf course that Americans barely recognize at first as a course. It is sere to the eye and sandy underfoot, true linksland along the sea. In his playing days, the late Ben Hogan said, "Heather and gorse are abundant in the rough. Heather, something like a fern, grows in clumps about eight inches to a foot high.... If you get in it, you have to hit the ball about ten times as hard as you would otherwise and then most times it won't go more than ten yards.... Gorse is taller.... I don't know what you do if you get in it." It has become legend, and so may never have happened, but that wonderful Virginia hillbilly Sam Snead saw the Old Course for the first time and said, "Down home, we plant cow beets on land like that."

The charm of the St. Andrews links is not its difficulty. Players love it for its differentness. Henry Longhurst, the great British golf writer, explained about Scottish golf: "Not only is every golfing pitch different from all the others, but it consists of eighteen little pitches within itself. Thus an almost inexhaustible supply of golfing problems presents itself."

If the golf course is different, so is St. Andrews the town. It is golf shops and hostelries at its core, surrounded by the sea and verdant farmland. Taking the brisk air in the town one summer evening in 1995, prior to the British Open Championship, my wife, Diana, and I came upon the American golfers Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade. We presumed they would be secluded somewhere thinking positive thoughts about the morrow's contest. "What are you doing here?" we asked. "Just soaking it in, man," Faxon said. "Just soaking it in."

After the Championship's first round, golf legend Arnold Palmer joined some friends for dinner at the five-star Old Course Hotel alongside the 17th hole. Palmer, whom I came to know as a genial companion when I was president of the United States Golf Association, had not had a good day by his standards but was his usual cordial self. As we drank good red wine and recounted the day's play, Palmer laughed, "You don't even have to play well to love it here." The man they call the King would, on his final day at the Championship, stand on the little bridge that crosses Swilcan Burn at the final hole and receive as great applause as I have heard anywhere.

One of those who watched and applauded Palmer from a balcony in a private flat across the street was George Bush. The former President himself had received a warm greeting from the Scots. Palmer, though, was a contestant and the great masses meant to honor perhaps his last appearance at their Open at St. Andrews. The crowd in the nearby (and less grand) Rusacks Hotel cheered Palmer and Bush simultaneously. Rusacks has been hosting both golfers and people who require security details for a very long time. Princes of the realm come here, as do Presidents.

Just behind the starter's office and the Royal and Ancient Clubhouse is the British Golf Museum, a marvelous collection of memorabilia, everything from the Troon Clubs, possibly the oldest surviving golf clubs, to a cap signed by 1997 British Open winner Justin Leonard. The small admission makes it a bargain for those who want to bask in history either before or after a round.

For those who are simply bored with golf, or who are waiting for spouses to finish the round, try this: Shop for fine cashmere at the shops that still carry the names of the late great professional golfers Old Tom Morris and Tom Auchterlonie. Or walk a short way up the street to the Scores Hotel coffee shop and listen to the pompous language visitors use occasionally. The British fellow behind me at breakfast one morning actually said, "If it may be obtained, I should like to have a cooked breakfast." He finally ordered bacon and eggs with toast.

The information in this story was accurate at the time it was published, but we suggest you confirm all details before making travel plans.