Stories
Stories
The long reads of ULTIMATE Golf: how the game began, the players who shaped it, the championships and the crowds who follow them, and the histories of the great clubs. Every fact comes from a source listed under each story.
The game
The game
The story of golf: from the links of Scotland to the Olympic Games
A game banned by a Scottish king, written down by Edinburgh gentlemen and shaped by a town on the Fife coast now carries its rules, its balls and its eighteen holes across the international stage.
The championships
The championships: the Open, the Masters, the Ryder Cup and the crowds who follow them
From eight men on a twelve-hole links at Prestwick to 290,000 spectators at St Andrews, the great championships have become the days when golf belongs to everyone who comes to watch.
The players
The great players: from Old Tom Morris to the career grand slam
Greenkeepers and lawyers, showmen and perfectionists: the champions who turned a Scottish pastime into the game the world watches, and the six who have won all four majors.Club histories
Histories and architects →
Club history
St Andrews Links
Golf has been played on the links at St Andrews since the early 15th century, and the Old Course still shapes how the game is laid out, ruled and watched.
Club history
Muirfield
From the Silver Club at Leith in 1744 to a private links on the Firth of Forth, the Honourable Company has been writing golf’s rules, and its home course, for nearly three centuries.
Club history
Carnoustie Golf Links
Golf is recorded in Carnoustie in 1560. The links went on to shape the Open and send its professionals across the Atlantic.
Club history
North Berwick Golf Club
Golf has been played on North Berwick’s West Links since the 17th century; the club dates from 1832, and the 15th hole, the Redan, has been copied around the world.
Club history
Gleneagles
Conceived by a railway manager in 1910 and shaped by James Braid, Gleneagles opened its courses in 1919 and its hotel in 1924, and has hosted both the Ryder Cup and the Solheim Cup.
Club history
Real Club Valderrama
A Robert Trent Jones Sr course on the Andalusian coast that was rebuilt in the 1980s and became the setting for Europe’s 1997 Ryder Cup.
Club history
Real Club de Golf Sotogrande
Opened in 1964 as the heart of a new residential estate, Sotogrande was Robert Trent Jones’s first European course.
Club history
Royal Colombo Golf Club
From a patch of Galle Face Green shared with cricketers to a royal title in 1928, the story of Sri Lanka’s Royal Colombo is the story of golf coming to Ceylon.
Club history
Nuwara Eliya Golf Club
Laid out for British servicemen and tea planters in Sri Lanka’s cool hill country, the course at Nuwara Eliya has been played, in one form or another, for well over a century.
Club history
The Breakers Golf
Henry Flagler’s oceanfront resort in Palm Beach has played host to golfers since the end of the nineteenth century, and its Ocean Course carries a layout drawn up in 1897.
Club history
Emirates Golf Club
Opened in 1988 on 175 acres of Dubai sand dunes, Emirates Golf Club proved that a fully grassed championship course could work in the desert.
Club history