A townscape of historic St. Andrews
he St. Andrews Links Trust endures a love/ hate relationship with the constituency it is charged with serving. There is no arguing that the condition of the golf courses and the quality of the facilities today are immeasurably superior to when it was established in 1974. Back then, golfers on holiday, more often than not, would pull up to the Old Course to have a look, snap a picture, then motor on to a course that did not resemble the raggedy carpet in a St. Andrews University dormitory. Golfers who did stay to play changed their shoes in the car park. It was quaint, but the experience did not meet the reasonable expectations of tourists who shelled out to tee it up at the home of golf.
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The golf courses formerly fell under the purview of the St. Andrews Town Council, but the body was abolished under a redistricting that proposed shifting the government seat across the Firth of Tay to Dundee, the negative side effect of which would bring a flood of Dundonians to the links. So as to keep control of the hallowed grounds in St. Andrews, an order enacted by the Queen constituted the Links Trust to manage them. This was not the first act that affected the links. Kings James II, James III, and James IV issued acts in the years 1457, 1471, and 1492, respectively, that banned the playing of golf. But cooler heads prevailed, and golfers returned to the links, though they had to share with neighbors who helped
themselves to peat to fuel their fires and carved out chunks of turf for roofing. Then there were the rabbits. In 1797, the cash- strapped town council sold the land. Untold acrimony may well have been avoided had the new owners not been rabbit farmers. It did not take long for the rabbits to trash the place, or for the locals to turn up the heat on the town council. The golfers, clearly, were not amused. Siding with their constituents, the council backed the plaintiffs in a court case seeking “that the inhabitants of St. Andrews and others shall be at liberty to take, kill or destroy the rabbits.” So those who were game to take a whack mashied every rabbit they could get a niblick on.
y this time the Old Course boasted an established 18-hole layout, having been reconfigured in 1764 from a 22-hole loop that saw golfers play 11 holes out, turn around, then play the same 11 holes back in. Given that each putting green had only one hole (double greens were not introduced until 1832), confusion surely reigned when incoming and outgoing matches collided head on. In addition to a few bloody noses, this conflict may have incited the advent of golf etiquette, the unwritten code that complements the official rules of golf, which are administered by the USGA in America and the R&A everywhere else in the world.
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