Gleneagles: King’s, Queen’s and the PGA Centenary

A railway manager’s vision

Gleneagles began as a holiday idea. In 1910 Donald Matheson, General Manager of the Caledonian Railway Company, was so struck by the Strathearn countryside that he imagined a palatial country house hotel with a golf course. Gleneagles Ltd was formed in 1913 to build both, but the First World War halted the project in 1914, and work did not resume until 1922.

Braid’s two courses

Matheson had engaged James Braid, a five-time winner of The Open, to design the King’s and the Queen’s. Braid won his Opens in 1901, 1905, 1906, 1908 and 1910, and went on to a career in course design; he is reputed to have designed or remodelled over 200 courses. At Gleneagles the work was done by manual labour, horse and cart, in rugged ground.

Both courses opened on 1 May 1919, five years before the hotel. In 1921 Gleneagles staged the first international match between American and British professional golfers, regarded as a precursor of the Ryder Cup.

The hotel opens

The hotel opened on Saturday 7 June 1924, billed in the press as “the eighth wonder of the world”. By then the Caledonian had become part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, which took the company over fully. Henry Hall and his band played at the opening ball, which was broadcast across the country on BBC Radio.

The Second World War closed the hotel, which became a military hospital. It reopened in 1947 and has been open year-round since 1982. By 1950 it was a regular fixture on the high-society calendar: the London season was followed by yachting at Cowes, polo at Deauville and golf and grouse shooting at Gleneagles.

The opening night was celebrated with Scotland’s first ever outside broadcast, and the hotel was equipped with its own dedicated railway branch line.

Nicklaus, the Ryder Cup and the Solheim

The third course arrived in 1993, when Jack Nicklaus designed and opened the Monarch’s Course, later renamed the PGA Centenary Course. There is also a nine-hole course, the Wee Course, and a PGA academy.

In September 2014 Gleneagles became only the second venue in Scotland to host a Ryder Cup, after Muirfield in 1973. Europe, captained by Paul McGinley, retained the cup, with the USA led by Tom Watson. Five years later, the Solheim Cup drew record crowds of more than 90,000, the highest attendance at a women’s golf event in British history. Gleneagles is the only golf destination in Europe to have hosted both.

Courses and calendar

The King’s is a heather and heathland course by Braid; the Queen’s, also his, is a par-68 heathland course. The estate covers 850 acres, and the hotel is a Category B listed building. The PGA Centenary Course, awarded the Ryder Cup in 2001, was due to host it in 2013 but the matches moved to 2014.

The 2014 matches ended at the 15th, where Jamie Donaldson sealed the victory with a pitching wedge to two feet. In 2018 Gleneagles hosted the Glasgow 2018 European Golf Team Championships, where Europe’s elite men and women played side by side for equal prize money for the first time. The hotel was bought from Diageo by Ennismore in 2015.

Visiting

The estate lies near Auchterarder in Perthshire, about an hour from Edinburgh, and the three championship courses sit among the hills, heather and woodland of the grounds.

Our advice: play the King’s first. It is the Braid course, the one Matheson commissioned, and the club describes it as an inland links; a century on, it is the natural introduction to the place.