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Leader of the Links Alan McGregor, who retired as chief executive of the St Andrews Links Trust at the turn of the year, talks to Lewine Mair about his time in charge of the Home of Golf
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lan McGregor does not disagree with the notion that he has enjoyed 13 years in arguably the best job in the game. “I think,” he nods, “that it’s because almost everyone who works in the golf industry has a passion for the game. It makes everything so much easier.” The Open championships of 2000, 2005 and 2010 took place during McGregor’s term of office and this modest man wastes no time in picking out something he had got more wrong than right. “After Tiger had won in 2005,” he recalled, “I remember saying that it would be the best possible scenario if he were to come back in 2010 with the chance of overtaking Jack Nicklaus’s haul of 18 majors. It seemed like a sensible call at the time.” McGregor’s love of the game was fostered during preparatory schooldays at New Park in St Andrews. The establishment boasted a golf-mad headmaster named Derek McLeod who, whenever the great golfers of the day were in town, wasted no time in calling a holiday. “He might say it was because So-and-So had got 42 per cent or whatever in his Common Entrance exams,” says McGregor, with the 42 per cent figure hopefully having rather more to do with the telling of a good story than the hard facts. It was in such circumstances that the young McGregor saw Peter Thomson winning the 1955 Open over the Old Course. This was the second of Thomson’s quintet of Open victories and the second year of a seven-year-run in which he never finished outside the top two. McGregor remains one of Thomson’s greatest admirers and chuckles to this day at the memory of how his fellow member of the R&A went over to the US senior tour and won nine events in the one summer. “It was his answer to those Americans who had belittled his efforts on the grounds that he was not well known over there. “When Peter came back,” continues McGregor, “he contented himself with a wry, ‘Well, I think they’ve heard of me now.’” McGregor, who has given way at the Trust to Euan Loudon, formerly the chief executive of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, picked out the 2005 Open as the best from his 13 years. “Tiger’s win in 2000 was so amazingly perfect in every way as to be a little short of drama,” he ventures, before going on to admit that he was not entirely sure he could separate 2005 from 2010.
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HK Golfer・Feb/Mar 2011
HKGOLFER.COM
Alan McGregor, St Andrews, November 2010
Courtesy of the St Andrews Links Trust
Photo courtesy of the St Andrews Links Trust
HKGOLFER.COM
HK GolferăƒťFeb/Mar 2011
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Past champions: Tiger Woods cradles the Claret Jug after claiming victory in 2005 (below), while McGregor admits to being spellbound by John Daly's play enroute to capturing the the Open Championship title in 1995 (right)
This was down to his staff’s presentation of the course last year. Following the mother and father of all storms on the night of 30 March, the Strathtyrum and the Eden were flooded, while the Swilcan Burn was depositing salt water all over the first and eighteenth fairways of the Open championship links. “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.
"After Tiger had won in 2005,” he recalled, “I remember saying that it would be the best possible scenario if he were to come back in 2010 with the chance of overtaking Jack Nicklaus’s haul of 18 majors. It seemed like a sensible call at the time."
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HK Golfer・Feb/Mar 2011
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 in 1998 – 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 carpark 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. I ask McGregor to name a few of the memories which will light his retirement – much of which will be spent on the North Links in his hometown of Perth – and he wastes no time in mentioning John Daly. HKGOLFER.COM
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“When people think of St Andrews, they tend to think of R&A members but golf belongs to everyone in the town and John Daly absolutely fits with the place."
“ 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.” HK Golfer・Feb/Mar 2011
AFP (Woods/Daly)
“He won before I was working for the Trust but I was spellbound by his play from the first moment he appeared in the old Dunhill Cup,” says McGregor. “When people think of St Andrews, they tend to think of R&A members but golf belongs to everyone in the town and John Daly absolutely fits with the place. “People love him for his booming tee-shots and they love the fact that he is not afraid to bring out his driver. They also find his honesty re his various shortcomings more than a little endearing.” From Daly, McGregor switched to Paula Creamer and her famous handstand on the Swilcan Bridge during the Ricoh Women’s British Open of 2007. “That event was a source of huge pride to everyone in the town,” recalls McGregor. “Even the most grudging of R&A members had to admit that the golf was nothing short of sensational. As for Lorena Ochoa, she was a truly wonderful champion.” McGregor’s favourite Tiger memory relates to the 2000 Open and the night he had been attending a dinner at the Links Trust clubhouse. As he left, he noticed a gaggle of spectators standing in the half-dark beside the practice ground. Closer investigation revealed that the little crowd had stayed back to watch Tiger practising and that Tiger, in turn, had stayed back to sign autographs for every one of them. “It was very impressive,” said the former CEO. In terms of the Trust’s proliferating number of money-making ventures, no-one who knows the story will be surprised to learn that McGregor picked out the sale of the old blue starter’s box which used to stand beside the first tee on the Old Course. 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.
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