It’s a name that resonates throughout the world, the home of golf, and when you step out on to the Old Course at St Andrews there is a sense you are walking through history.
Each generation has legends cast in the mind, iconic putts and “I was there” moments, old tales recycled every time the Open Championship swirls back to Scotland’s east coast, told with the same enthusiasm as those who lived and breathed them the first time round.
A 19-year-old Bobby Jones ripping up his scorecard having failed to escape a daunting bunker on the 11th and then returning to triumph six years later, Seve Ballesteros’ celebratory jig after duelling with Tom Watson for the 1984 crown, the second leg of the ‘Tiger Slam’, Doug Sanders missing a three-footer on the final hole in 1970 that opened the door for Jack Nicklaus to beat the enigmatic American in a play-off.
In the build-up to the historic 150th staging of golf’s oldest major, Nicklaus returned to the scene of two of his three Open titles for the first time in 17 years to become just the third American - after Jones, who won here in 1927, and Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ founding fathers - to be named an honorary citizen of the town.
It has been that kind of celebratory mood in Fife this week, with St Andrews hosting The Open for a record 30th time and an unprecedented 290,000 fans making the pilgrimage to a site that golfers first navigated in the 15th century.
“I always said St Andrews looked like an old grey town until The Open came around,” said 82-year-old Nicklaus. “All of a sudden it just lit up and it was beautiful.”
Willie Park Sr. won the Challenge Belt - soon replaced by the Claret Jug - in the first Open at Prestwick on Scotland’s west coast in 1860, but today’s players will compete for a championship-record winning prize of £2m, with the total tournament purse rising by 22% from last year to £11.2m.
Tiger Woods has carved his own history at St Andrews, where a then-record crowd watched him lift the Claret Jug for the first time in 2000 - that number will be smashed this week and the event could have sold out four times over after more than 1.3 million people applied for tickets.
Woods was among the former winners to pose for photographs on the iconic Swilcan Bridge during Monday’s Celebration of Champions event, though it was Nick Faldo’s team who won the four-hole shootout, boasting four of the past six winners here in captain Faldo, Zach Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen and John Daly.
Winner of the other two? Tiger, of course, having also been victorious on the Old Course in 2005. (BBC Sport)