There’s simply no other golf course like it in the world. With roots dating back over 600 years, the Old Course at St. Andrews is a singular beacon to which many of golf’s traditions and peculiarities can be traced. The linksland itself was granted to the town in 1123 by King David of Scotland. Thanks to the recession of the North Sea, the land the Old Course occupies is an endlessly complex collection of naturally formed, perfectly scaled humps, hollows, ripples, valleys, and plateaus. So varied is the topography that it’s impossible to imagine ever playing the same shot twice in a lifetime. Add in the ever-changing winds, and you have a course that fascinates golfers just as much as it did centuries ago.
In 1764, the course was reduced from 22 to 18 holes, a number that, because of the primacy of St. Andrews in the early golf world, eventually became the default length for a golf round. The course starts in town, follows a mainly linear path to the Eden Estuary, loops back on itself for holes 7-11, and returns to the town on the same route that it used on the way out. For many years, the course was far narrower than it is today and set hard against gorse bushes and other dense linksland vegetation on one side. The layout was purely reversible; golfers used the same corridors and pins both out and back. In the mid-1800s, as the Old Course grew busier, Keeper of the Green Old Tom Morris worked to create more room on the links. He built new greens for the first and 18th holes, cleared vegetation, and created the current fairways for the second through seventh holes, and expanded the greens so that they could accommodate separate pins. This project — an ambitious one for the time — created the potential for clockwise and counter-clockwise loops around the course. Eventually, the counter-clockwise or “right-hand” routing we’re all familiar with today became standard. So, although no architect can be identified as the Old Course’s official designer, Old Tom deserves a great deal of credit. He grew up in St. Andrews, learned the game on the links, and returned after a stint at Prestwick to serve as the Keeper of the Green from 1864 until his death in 1908.
The Old Course’s influence on golf cannot be overstated. Its impact on the language of course design is embodied in holes like 11 (“Eden”), a terrifying par 3; 14 (“Long”), an iconic par 5 featuring the “Hell Bunker”; 16 (“Corner of the Dyke”), with its Principal’s Nose bunker complex; and 17 (“Road”), which needs little introduction. These are the holes that golf’s earliest architects praised as the greatest in the world, and that they mimicked with “ideal holes,” or templates, in their own designs across the world. More than any other course, the Old shaped the foundational ideas of what a golf course should be. Its influence is indisputable and pervasive.
To date, the Old Course has hosted the Open Championship 30 times — more than any other venue. Although it wasn’t the first Open site (that distinction goes to Prestwick), it is and always will be the most significant place to win golf’s grandest major.
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