Corporate Leader Daily § St. Andrews’s Astonishing New Course

Article
Outdoor Office : St. Andrews’s Astonishing New Course

The St. Andrews Links Trust began searching for the right spot on which to build a seventh layout in 1998. They found it, but not without difficulty. “When it’s known that you’re looking for a bit of land for a golf course,” says St. Andrews GM Alan McGregor, “local farmers sense an opportunity.”

By: Scott Gummer
Spring 2008 , Page 80

You might have called it an investment spend, perhaps a loss leader. As you signed the contract, you’d have probably said you were doing it for the sake of brand building, or to strengthen a foothold in a vital region. Or maybe you’d have admitted to yourself that the allure of the job simply outweighed the paycheck. Regardless, you’d surely have done what golf architect David McLay Kidd did when he vowed six years ago to land the contract for The Castle Course — the highly anticipated seventh layout at the St. Andrews Links — no matter what. Some jobs are just too good to pass up.

Kidd, of course, was hardly alone in coveting the commission for the first new championship golf course in 94 years at St. Andrews.

“For me, it was personal as much as professional,” says Kidd, who made his mark in 1995, at the wee age of 27, when he began designing the now legendary Bandon Dunes on Oregon’s southern coast. A native Scot, he had learned the business at the side of his father, who himself spent a quarter-century overseeing the golfing grounds at the exquisite Gleneagles resort. And for Kidd, the chance to work in Scotland, at the fabled “Home of Golf,” no less, was too good to be true — literally.

The budget for the job, you see, turned out to be shockingly meager, and the chosen spot for the course was a derelict potato field, upon which sat the town’s sewage-treatment plant. “We haven’t got crap,” Kidd lamented to his lieutenant, Paul Kimber, the first time they walked the plot. “Actually,” he corrected himself, “that’s all we’ve got.” Then there was the gorse-like thicket of sticky red tape that threatened to strangle the project. Still, the St. Andrews Links Trust navigated the political potholes. And Kidd, by sheer dint of his passion for the project, zlanded the Castle Course.

It’s fair to say that the resulting layout, when it opens this June (with greens fees ranging from £84 to £120), will be the year’s hottest destination for the golfing exec, and a thrilling testament to Kidd’s uniquely artisanal approach. He began by assembling a team of talented earth-shapers who conjured the golf holes not on paper, but by creating wild land forms upon which Kidd fashioned tees and greens. Set against 1.5 miles of coastline, these towering mounds and grassy dunes deliver vertiginous views of St. Andrews Bay from all 18 holes — seven of which abut the water. The finishing holes, with their suicidal clifftop greens, are destined to become classics.

Interestingly enough, although it looks every bit like a true, classic links, unlike its six sister courses at St. Andrews, the Castle is actually not. Built on loose soil as opposed to sand, it will offer a more airborne, more heathland experience — making it less Ballybunion than, say, Bandon Dunes. Still, that particular investment spend continues to pay dividends for Kidd and for anyone fortunate enough to play it. And the same will surely be said, years from now, of this outstanding new gem.

standrews.org.uk