You might think that all is silent on the Scottish golfing front after a ’22 season in which the country hosted the full complement of GB&I-based majors: the Open at St Andrews, the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield and the Senior Open at Gleneagles.
Where things have not gone quite so silent in the Land of the Thistle is at R&A headquarters. There, staff and members have moved out, with builders and deep-digging bulldozers taking their place. If you don't already know, they are turning the ancient cellars into plush changing rooms for men and women alike.
By way of a warning for visitors, this is no time to be thinking of ringing the front door bell. For now, there is no bell, no front door and no porch. All have disappeared.
Maybe they have gone the way of the Victorian starter’s box, which was erected in 1924 at a price of £21.50 and stood proudly beside the first tee of the Old Course for 77 years. While it was being demolished in favour of a stone version, someone offered to buy it for use as a garden shed for £5 or thereabouts. In the end, it was purchased by American John Hagen, who shipped it to California where, after a series of costly mishaps en route, it ended up at the Country Club of the Desert in La Quinta, California, and in the pages of a delightful book called “Play Away Please.”
Meanwhile, the R&A staff, all of whom have been billeted to nearby R&A-owned properties, are busy hatching, or rather polishing, a plan. It will have the American college system pricking up its ears.
“What we’re doing is to give those students who are looking for an alternative to the U.S. college system the chance to compete with what’s on offer over there.”
Mike Woodcock
Impressed though the R&A always has been with what the U.S. offers in the way of competitive playing opportunities for students, the R&A now wants the equivalent.
“All of this should have happened years ago,” said Mike Woodcock, the R&A’s director of corporate communications. “What we’re doing is to give those students who are looking for an alternative to the U.S. college system the chance to compete with what’s on offer over there.”
In fairness, the R&A has been handing out university golf scholarships for years. However, its latest move has been to introduce a lavish R&A Student Tour Series in which students from outside America and Mexico can compete in events in Scotland, France, Spain and Portugal with a view to qualifying for finals at St Andrews. From start to finish, all tournaments involved will be played on top courses which have held one or other of Open qualifiers and DP World Tour events. Furthermore, the students can collect World Amateur Golf Ranking points along the way.
The series had something of a silent send-off in 2019 and, though there was no follow-on event in ’20, it re-appeared for the 2021-22 instalment. Today, at a time when the 2022-23 edition is already under way, many of our more golf-orientated universities are busy trying to switch long-established fixtures in order to get in on the action.
David Kitt, of Maynooth University in Ireland, won the boys’ 2021-22 Order of Merit and has answered virtually every question which promising teenagers and their parents will have at the ready. “For a long time,” began the Irishman, “the competition simply wasn’t there if you didn’t go to an American college, but that’s all changed. Now, we’re playing on good courses and against good players all the time. You have to play well if you’re going to win anything.
“As I see it, we’ve got just as much of a chance of making it as professionals as anyone who goes to the States.”
In other words, students no longer need to think of three or four years at a U.K. university as three or four wasted golfing seasons.
England’s Nicola Slater, the Stirling University student who finished second to Lorna McClymont in the girls’ Order of Merit in 2021-22, had at one point thought that if she were to go to a U.K. university, she would spend half the time playing in perfectly hideous conditions. Experience has taught her otherwise.
“At Stirling,” she said, “the golf students go on a number of trips abroad, including America.” As for the weather, she realised that learning to play in a wide range of conditions could only help her to become a better-rounded competitor in the years ahead.
The Student Tour Series apart, the R&A is completing a list of all events in the U.K. which should fit in with a student’s itinerary, with the Boyd Quaich Memorial one which caught on as never before in ’22.
This event, which is hosted by the University of St Andrews, is a bit different in that it is a team affair featuring two students per university from all over the world. The lettering on the Quaich tells of the event being a memorial to two golf-mad brothers who died in World War II, and that its purpose is to foster lasting friendship among all nations.
Last year’s participants had the feeling that they were rubbing shoulders with the stars as they played straight after the Open and at a time when the stands and the Open posters were still in place.
Students apart, St Andrews in ’23 will mostly be the preserve of the more ordinary golfing fry, of whom many among the overseas contingent have been fretting, impatiently, to make a return to the Old Course after a series of difficult years.
Firstly, COVID put a stop to their travel arrangements. Then, when it came to ’22, the course was closed not just for the week of the Open but the preceding month, though all in a good cause. The greenkeeping personnel needed time to bring their historic links up to a level of perfection where they would be on the receiving end of as good of a press as was in store for the leading players. It was all that, and more.
Assuredly, those who make the trip to Scotland this summer will be able to feed off a host of glorious memories, most notably those of Rory McIlroy chasing eventual winner Cameron Smith down the stretch in the Open.
Yet my own favourite is that of the smiling veterans who revelled in playing over the King’s Course at Gleneagles in the Senior Open.
In their prime, they would have been as the moderns in hurrying to sign their cards and escape to the clubhouse. Now, they have reached that happy stage where they not only enjoy one another’s company but that of old friends among the media.
For example, Retief Goosen, whose putting on the slippery greens at Shinnecock Hills in 2004 won him a second U.S. Open, was in the best of spirits at the end of what he considered a lacklustre 70.
When I suggested that he had changed since that day at Shinnecock Hills when I ventured to ask if he had a pulse, he laughed delightedly.
“You should see me now,” he replied. “I can’t hole a thing.”
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Lorna McClymont (left) and David Kitt top the R&A Student Tour Series in 2022.
COURTESY R&A