“It was all hands on deck,” says McGregor, who goes on to describe how the green-keeping team had to spray gallons of ordinary water on to the relevant areas by way of diluting the salt and keeping the damage to a minimum.
Turning around the Trust’s greenkeeping arrangements was one facet of McGregor’s reign for which he will forever be remembered. When he came to the Trust in1998 – he came via a firm of auctioneers in Perth – there was just the one maintenance shed featuring an asbestos roof punctuated with holes from stray golf balls. The machinery inside was similarly not the best.
“If any item of equipment used on the Old Course broke down,” he says with a disbelieving shake of the head, “a course as good as the Eden had to forfeit its version of whatever it was and go without.” He undertook a £40 million investment in greenkeeping arrangements and staff training, besides embarking on a successful partnership with Toro, the golf course management people. Today, there are two maintenance centres on the links, each with a fleet of state-of-the-art machinery.“Our core activity is keeping the courses in prime condition and, generally speaking, the feedback is great,” says McGregor.
The new Links Trust clubhouse was already in place when McGregor took up his post and, to this day, he heaps praise on his predecessor for overcoming any amount of local opposition to see the project through. Before it was built, those visiting golfers who were not based in a nearby hotel would have to change their shoes in the car- park as, indeed, McGregor and his father had to do on a trip to play the Old Course in the 1970s.
It was McGregor who was responsible for bringing the catering in-house and, shortly afterwards, for employing Danny Campbell, a first-class director of retail. As much as anything else, these twin moves have enabled the Trust to keep down the price of the locals’ golf.
For a mind-boggling, believe-it-or-not £170 (approximately HK$2,000), a St Andrews’ resident can buy himself an annual links ticket for all the courses, including the Old Course. And for £35, he can equip himself with an annual ticket for both the nine-hole Balgove and the Strathtyrum. “The Strathtyrum is a fabulous wee course,” enthuses McGregor.
McGregor was also the man to divert more of the money made by initiatives such as the ‘Old Course Experience’ – a commercial venture which guarantees tee times for overseas corporations and groups – into the Trust’s coffers. Cheap though the game might be for the townsfolk, there are golfers from around the world who will happily pay thousands of pounds for a holiday taking in a round over the Old Course and its neighbours.
Pages
Click here to see the published article.
