St Andrews Old Course: a living history

A links that grew with its town

The Old Course is best understood as a piece of St Andrews that became a championship stage, rather than a stadium designed around a championship. Its importance begins before The Open existed. The coastal ground belonged to the burgh, served several purposes and developed through use. That is why the history of the place cannot sensibly be compressed into a single opening day or the name of one architect. A visitor looking across the first and eighteenth holes is seeing the meeting of town life, common land, organised golf and an international sporting competition.

Historic Environment Scotland records the 1552 charter that upheld the townspeople's use of the links, including golf. It also records the change from twenty-two holes to eighteen in 1764 and Old Tom Morris's appointment as Keeper of the Green in 1864. Those dates describe different kinds of development: a recognised right to use land, a change in the length of a round and the stewardship of an already established course. They should not be treated as interchangeable claims about when golf was invented. Historic Environment Scotland: St Andrews Links.

Keepers, shared ground and changing strategy

St Andrews has no single founding designer in the modern sense. The course's physical character reflects a long process of playing, tending and adapting the links. Old Tom's role matters because maintenance and design were closely connected: deciding how land was used, where greens developed and how golfers moved around the ground could change the game without requiring a wholly new site. Calling the Old Course simply an Old Tom Morris design misses the older landscape that he inherited.

Its shared greens and the proximity of neighbouring holes also reward a different way of watching. A television close-up can make each shot seem isolated, but the wider setting reveals choices about angle, position and the next approach. The apparent openness is part of the puzzle. A fairway that looks generous from the side may still offer one particularly useful line into a green. For a history-minded spectator, the interest lies in comparing those decisions across generations, while remembering that equipment, maintenance, championship tees and weather all change. The same place does not produce identical playing conditions every time. PGA Tour: Old Course background.

1873: the championship leaves Prestwick

The Open first came to St Andrews in 1873. Until then every edition had been played at Prestwick. Tom Kidd won the first Old Course championship with 179 over the shorter championship format of the time. That result is more than a local footnote: it marks the point at which The Open became a travelling event. St Andrews brought another established golfing community and another set of problems into a competition that had begun on the Ayrshire coast.

The early sequence shows why the Old Course should not be approached only through its twentieth-century celebrities. Bob Martin won in 1876 and again in 1885; Jamie Anderson won in 1879, Bob Ferguson in 1882, Jack Burns in 1888 and Hugh Kirkaldy in 1891. These names belong to the championship's formative period. Their victories connect the links with the professionals and caddies of nineteenth-century Scottish golf, before transatlantic travel and international broadcasting made The Open a worldwide spectacle. The complete table below preserves every Old Course edition rather than allowing the most famous recent photographs to stand in for the whole story. The R&A: the 1873 championship.

Taylor and Braid change the scale

J.H. Taylor won here in 1895 and 1900, followed by James Braid in 1905 and 1910. These were seventy-two-hole championships, so their totals should not be ranked directly against the nineteenth-century thirty-six-hole scores. The change in format matters whenever someone describes an early champion as having set a scoring record. A total measures the number of strokes taken over a particular competition, and that competition has not always involved the same number of holes.

Taylor's second Old Course victory was emphatic: his 309 in 1900 left him eight strokes clear. Braid's 1910 success completed his five Open victories. Those achievements place St Andrews within the era of the Great Triumvirate, alongside Harry Vardon, even though Vardon never won an Open on this course. It is a useful reminder that a player's overall standing and their record at one venue are different stories. The Old Course has rewarded many of the game's great champions, but it has never distributed victories according to reputation alone. The R&A: Taylor in 1900; Braid in 1910.

Hutchison, Jones and the Atlantic connection

Jock Hutchison's victory in 1921 gives the course a particularly revealing international chapter. The R&A classifies him as an American champion, while also noting his St Andrews origins. Birthplace, citizenship and the country represented in a sporting record need not be the same thing. The nationality labels in the championship table follow the organiser's classification rather than assigning a country from a player's name or place of birth.

Bobby Jones won at St Andrews in 1927, his second consecutive Open title. His amateur status gives that victory a different significance from the professional successes around it. The Open's identity has always included the possibility of amateurs competing against the leading professionals, although the balance of the field has changed greatly. Denny Shute followed as Old Course champion in 1933, Dick Burton in 1939 and Sam Snead in 1946. The gap between the last two editions records the interruption of the Second World War, rather than a normal rota decision. The R&A: Hutchison in 1921; Jones in 1927.

The post-war champions

Peter Thomson won the 1955 Open here, Bobby Locke the 1957 edition, Kel Nagle the centenary championship in 1960 and Tony Lema in 1964. Read together, those results show how international the list of Old Course champions had become. They also guard against a familiar mistake in golf history: assuming that the best-known player in an era must have won its most symbolic event. Nagle, rather than Arnold Palmer, took the title in 1960.

Jack Nicklaus eventually won twice at St Andrews, in 1970 and 1978. The first involved an eighteen-hole play-off against Doug Sanders; the second added another Old Course victory to an already distinguished championship career. A visit to the finishing holes therefore connects two kinds of history. There are the decisive individual strokes that remain in television compilations, and the longer record of players who repeatedly put themselves in position to win across several decades. The R&A: the centenary Open; the 1970 play-off.

1984: two closing holes, two different outcomes

Seve Ballesteros's victory in 1984 is inseparable from his celebration on the eighteenth green, but the finish involved events unfolding on two holes. Ballesteros birdied the last while Tom Watson was making bogey at the seventeenth. Watson had been trying to win a third consecutive Open and match Vardon's six titles. Instead, Ballesteros finished on 276, two strokes ahead of Watson and Bernhard Langer.

For spectators, the episode explains why following only the leader can leave part of a final-round story unseen. An apparently separate contest on the Road Hole could change the meaning of a putt at the last. The town-side finish makes that relationship especially vivid: the concluding holes occupy a shared landscape, while the arithmetic of the championship links players who are not standing together. The famous fist pump is the image; the changing scores behind it are the sporting explanation. The R&A: the 1984 championship.

From Faldo to the modern champions

Nick Faldo won in 1990 with 270. John Daly followed in 1995 after a play-off with Costantino Rocca. Tiger Woods then won in 2000 and 2005, with an eight-stroke margin on the first occasion. Those championships are useful comparisons because they resist a single explanation of what St Andrews demands. Winning here has involved precise control, recovery, power used selectively and the ability to avoid an expensive mistake when the leaderboard changes.

Louis Oosthuizen won by seven strokes in 2010. Zach Johnson prevailed in the 2015 play-off, and Cameron Smith won the 150th Open in 2022. Smith's 268 was twenty under par, matching the championship's lowest winning score relative to par at that time. It was not the lowest stroke total ever recorded at an Open: Henrik Stenson's 264 at Royal Troon in 2016 remains a different record. Raw totals and scores relative to par answer different questions, and the distinction matters when comparing courses. The R&A: Woods in 2000; Smith in 2022.

A living championship venue

Through the 2022 championship, St Andrews had hosted thirty Opens. The announced 2027 return will be the thirty-first, not a result to add to the historical winners table before play takes place. That distinction keeps future plans separate from completed sporting records. No champion, score or weather conditions can be supplied for an event that has yet to happen.

The most rewarding visit treats the Old Course as both a working golf landscape and a place of memory. Look for the relationship between holes and town, then use the championship stories to give particular places meaning. The current venue guide covers access and practical arrangements; the event hub covers the forthcoming championship. Those details change more quickly than the history. Choose an overnight base that gives enough time to explore St Andrews as well as attend the golf, rather than trying to fit several centuries of context into the walk back to a bus. The R&A: the announced 2027 return.

Championships hosted

Championships at St Andrews Old Course appear below, bringing together the competitions covered in this History section. Qualifying courses are included.

Sources and useful official links

• Confirmed: Historic Environment Scotland: St Andrews Links
• Confirmed: PGA Tour: Old Course background
• Confirmed: The R&A: the 1873 championship
• Confirmed: The R&A: Taylor in 1900
• Confirmed: Braid in 1910
• Confirmed: The R&A: Hutchison in 1921
• Confirmed: Jones in 1927
• Confirmed: The R&A: the centenary Open
• Confirmed: the 1970 play-off
• Confirmed: The R&A: the 1984 championship
• Confirmed: The R&A: Woods in 2000
• Confirmed: Smith in 2022
• Confirmed: The R&A: the announced 2027 return

Useful reading for your visit

• The Open 2027 St Andrews: Tickets & Hotels
• St Andrews Accommodation: The Open 2027
• Golf history, where it happened

Visit today

• St Andrews Old Course visitor guide
• The Open 2027 at St Andrews
• Where to stay for The Open 2027 at St Andrews

Some links earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate disclosure.