Snapshot

Herb Kohler first visited St Andrews as a young boy in the late 1940s. He loved the town then, and his attachment has only grown since. Executive Chairman of the Kohler Company— which owns the Old Course Hotel—Kohler offers a personal tour of “The Home of Golf”

“I think I was nine,” starts Herb Kohler, now 83 years old and Executive Chairman of the Kohler Company, in recalling his first visit to St Andrews. “We sailed over from New York and we were in St Andrews for about three days. I didn’t get to play the Old Course but we walked the West Sands and flew a kite. There was a good wind on the West Sands and certainly the kites were quite magnificent. You would have had to travel a long way to find anything better than the West Sands kites.”

Today, as Kohler reflects on a fast-paced business career and extensive travels, St Andrews remains a reassuring constant in his life. Some things at St Andrews have changed—the championship tees on the Old Course are a lot further back than they used to be and the Old Course Hotel has been recently embellished by an impressive renovation—but the essence of St Andrews stays unaltered.

“Before sunrise you can take a walk from the hotel,” recommends Kohler, “across the 17th and 2nd fairways of the Old Course, and you end up at the West Sands. To watch the sunrise from the West Sands is really quite magnificent.

“From there you can walk right into the town and surround yourself with some of the oldest buildings belonging to the university. Then you get past North Street and up to the cathedral and the cemetery, and that is a mandatory visit. ‘Old’ Tom and ‘Young’ Tom are buried there and the history is remarkable, in terms of the setting among the ruins and the stories of the people buried there.

“What’s amazing about St Andrews is that the town does not really present itself for tourists. It is just “as we are” and that shows the character of the people. These are honest, hard-working people and some of my best friends are in St Andrews.”

The West Sands

Immortalized by the opening scene from Chariots of Fire, the West Sands is a broad two-mile beach along St Andrews Bay that runs beside the links golf courses. It begins near the first tee of the Old Course and reaches up to the top of the promontory where the bay meets the Eden Estuary.

The Cathedral

If you think the R&A Clubhouse is old—it dates back to 1854—it is a new build compared to the cathedral, which dates back to 1160. It took 150 years to build and it was the largest place of worship in Scotland. When the cathedral was dedicated in 1318 in attendance was Robert the Bruce, who was Scotland’s king at the time. It is now a ruin and around the corner are the 13th century ruins of St Andrews Castle, which was the residence of the archbishops and bishops of St Andrews.

The Burial Ground

The Cathedral burial ground presents an ID parade of the pioneers of Scottish golf. No fewer than a dozen of The Open’s earliest champions are buried here, along with Allan Robertson—the first golf professional to find real fame—whose death in 1859 prompted the inauguration of The Open. “Old” Tom Morris is buried here and, most poignantly, so too is his son, “Young” Tom Morris, the four-time Open champ who died aged just 24.

The University

The renowned St Andrews University dates back to 1413. Among the world’s English-speaking universities, only Oxford and Cambridge pre-date it. It was at St Andrews University that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Catherine, met as students in 2001.

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