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An approach shot to the home of golf

£125 in 2008, or about $220, for unlimited golf across the links. That’s the same price as one round on the Old for visitors, or half the cost as one round at Pebble Beach. Secondly, the Links Trust serves the local golf clubs (though it has no legal obligation to do so). There are five men’s clubs: the Royal & Ancient, the St. Andrews Golf Club, the New Golf Club, the XIXth Hole, and the Thistle Golf Club, as well as three ladies’ clubs: the St. Rule Club, the St. Regulus Golf Club, and the Ladies’ Putting Club. The links courses are all munis and do not belong to any of the golf clubs; however, members do enjoy special privileges on the links. Then there are the “others resorting thereto.” Despite the fact that golfers who pay to play the links support over five hundred full-time jobs in town and pump more than £20 million into the St. Andrews economy, 90 percent of which comes from outsiders, there is a sizeable faction of St. Andreans who are less welcoming of change than the Amish and would love nothing more than for the tourists to take their business elsewhere.

erious golfers will find the means to make their way to St. Andrews. Fewer Japanese are gearing up along Golf Place since their economy tanked, and Americans are reeling from the hammering the dollar has taken from the British pound since 9/11. But a more pressing

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reason why locals feel squeezed on the links is a spike in the number of recognized residents, which includes an influx of links ticket-eligible university students. When the Links Trust took over in 1974, the university’s 2,500 students made up 25 percent of the town’s 10,000 residents, roughly speaking. Today, the student populace has nearly tripled, to 7,000, which accounts for 43 percent of the 16,000 plus who now call St. Andrews home. The upsurge of interest in the university, Scotland’s first (est. 1413) and one of the UK’s finest (St. Andrews is to Oxford and Cambridge as Princeton is to Harvard and Yale) can be traced to the announcement of Prince William’s intent to enroll in 2001. A 44 percent increase in applications flooded the university from kids who were eager to befriend or betroth the heir to the throne.

There is no way to say what effect the prince, a keen golfer while at St. Andrews, had on the uptick in rounds played, but in 2001, the year William arrived, the links saw a record 215,000 rounds played, besting the previous mark of 208,000 in 1997. On his desk when McGregor signed on in September of that year was a strategic plan that showed the Old, New, and Jubilee courses running at capacity, the others nearly full, and the links as a whole flirting with the estimated breaking point of 220,000 rounds per annum across all six courses. Desperately seeking solutions, McGregor organized Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95
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