How St Andrews Became the Home of Golf: The Full Story

The title "Home of Golf" is not entirely accurate and it has never been officially defined by anyone with authority to do so. Golf was probably played in several Scottish coastal towns before St Andrews became dominant. Musselburgh has a credible claim to being the oldest continuously played golf course in the world. Edinburgh's golfers were writing down rules before St Andrews was. Leith Links, in Edinburgh, is where the first written rules of golf were produced, in 1744 — ten years before St Andrews formed its own club.

None of that changed the outcome. St Andrews is the home of golf in the way that Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland: it is true, it is recognised, and arguing about the exceptions is a specialist occupation.

Here is how it happened.

The 1457 Act and the early game

Golf appears in written records in Scotland from 1457, when the Scottish Parliament banned it. The Act of James II stated that "fute-ball and golfe be utterly cryed downe" — both games were distracting men from archery practice, which the crown needed more than recreation. Further bans followed in 1471 and 1491.

The bans were enforced badly, which is how we know the game was popular. People kept playing.

The earliest evidence of golf at St Andrews specifically comes from 1552, when a document establishing rights over the Links (the coastal common ground) explicitly mentions golf as one of the uses for which the land had long been used. The town of St Andrews did not own the Links — it was common ground, held for the use of the burgesses, which is why golf was free there for centuries.

The Links at St Andrews

The terrain of the St Andrews Links is the product of glacial retreat and the natural movement of sand and sediment over thousands of years. The ground between the town and the sea is sandy, undulating, and unsuitable for agriculture. It became common land used for a variety of purposes — archery, washing, rabbit grazing — and golf.

This is the characteristic pattern of early links golf across Scotland. The land was literally leftover: too sandy for crops, too exposed for habitation, of no commercial use. Golf colonised it because it was free and because the terrain — firm, bouncing, windswept — happened to suit the game.

The St Andrews Links was not designed. It evolved through use, with natural features (a burn at the 1st/18th, the valley of the 11th and 17th, the raised plateaux greens) determining how holes were played. Until the 18th century, golfers played out to a far point and returned along the same fairways, using different holes on the way back. The shared greens that characterise the Old Course today — where the 2nd and 16th share a green, as do the 3rd and 15th — are a survival of this original layout.

The Society of St Andrews Golfers (1754)

On 14 May 1754, twenty-two "Noblemen and Gentlemen being admirers of the ancient and healthful exercise of the golf" formed the Society of St Andrews Golfers. They drew up a set of thirteen rules based on those the Edinburgh golfers had written a decade earlier, and established an annual competition for a silver club.

This date, 1754, is what the R&A gives as its founding year. The Society did not immediately become the governing authority of world golf — that came much later — but it was from this point that St Andrews began to accumulate the institutional weight that eventually made the title "Home of Golf" a matter of common understanding rather than dispute.

In 1834, King William IV became patron of the Society, which was renamed the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. The "Royal and Ancient" designation is where the R&A's name comes from, though the modern R&A (the governing body) is a separate organisation that split from the golf club in 2004.

The 22-hole course and the move to 18

This is the detail that surprises most people: St Andrews was not always 18 holes. The original layout had 22 holes. In 1764, the Society resolved to reduce the first four holes to two, creating a course of 18 holes.

18 holes became the global standard not because anyone decided it was the right number in principle, but because St Andrews had 18 and everyone else followed. Golf courses with different hole counts existed well into the 20th century — some Scottish courses still have 9 holes today — but the gradual normalisation of 18 is largely a consequence of St Andrews' influence.

Tom Morris and the modern course

Old Tom Morris was appointed Keeper of the Green at St Andrews in 1865, having previously worked at Prestwick where he had already won four Open Championships. He is the most important figure in the physical development of the Old Course: he widened the fairways by cutting gorse, introduced greenkeeping practices that improved the turf quality, and modified several holes into a form recognisable today.

His son, Young Tom Morris, won four consecutive Open Championships between 1868 and 1872. Young Tom died at 24, in circumstances that have passed into the mythology of the game — the death of the greatest player of his generation, in the town where golf was becoming what it is. His memorial stands in St Andrews Cathedral graveyard.

The Open Championship and St Andrews

The Open Championship was first played at Prestwick in 1860. St Andrews hosted it for the first time in 1873. It has returned more times than any other venue — 30 occasions as of 2022, with the 2027 Open scheduled for St Andrews.

The association of the Old Course with the world's oldest major championship is the single biggest factor in cementing the "Home of Golf" identity. Every year the Open comes to St Andrews, the images of the 18th green, the Valley of Sin, the Swilcan Bridge, and the town behind reach hundreds of millions of people. No amount of historical argument about Leith Links competes with that volume of broadcast imagery.

The R&A and the rules of golf

Until 2004, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews was both a private golf club and the governing body for the rules of golf in most of the world (the USGA governed rules in the United States and Mexico). In 2004, the governing functions were transferred to a new organisation, The R&A, which is separate from the golf club but retains its base in St Andrews.

The R&A (in conjunction with the USGA) writes and revises the rules of golf used in every country except the United States and Mexico. This authority is what makes St Andrews the structural home of the game, rather than just a historical one. The place where the rules come from is, in a meaningful sense, the home of the game.

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For the Old Course specifically: The Old Course Ballot — Complete Guide. For the full timeline of Scottish golf: The Complete History of Golf in Scotland.