His idea of selling it on eBay met with any amount of resistance from those who felt a romantic attachment to a little hut which, in reality, was every bit as uncomfortable as you would expect of a structure which had been knocked up for £21.50 in 1921.
On the day of the sale, McGregor stood in front of the clock in the Trust’s offices as the bidding got under way.
“The arrangement,” he says, “was that the bidding would stop at mid-day precisely. As the hour drew nigh, there were only two people left – a gentleman from Denmark and John Hagen from America. I had my eye on the clock all the time and it was on the stroke of mid-day that Hagen won the box with his bid of £59,000. I have no doubt, though, that if we had not reached 12 o’clock, the two of them would have carried on.”
The money was promptly poured into the town’s junior golf, while Hagen had his prize shipped out to California.
“You have no idea how important St Andrews is to Americans,” continues McGregor, before advancing his story of the day a party of transatlantic visitors – “they were on a top dollar trip” – turned up to play the Old Course on just about as foul a day as the town can offer.
The CEO battled through the wind and rain to the first tee and was in the process of apologising profusely for the conditions when one of the four stopped him in his tracks.
“This is what we expected,” he said, “and we’re going to love every minute of it.” - L.M.
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