Jim Cusick, The Sunday Herald, 2 July 2000

St Andrews, the hallowed venue for this month's British Open Championship, has become the battle ground for an unholy civil war. The soul of Scottish golf is up for grabs - and everyone wants a slice Publication Date: Jul 2 2000 They badly need a second miracle at St Andrews. The Almighty helped out first time round when he created the Old Course. Now all they need is divine fine tuning and the creator to kick in his first 50-hour day.

Only a longer day would cause an outbreak of peace in the unholy civil war that has engulfed the ancient cathedral town. Factions claim everything from truth, justice and the ghost of James II are on their side as warfare rages over the home of golf and its heritage. Since "the gowf" left the shores of Fife it has become a global form of elitist, prestige-ridden tatus. But somehow its everyman roots, its socialist soul, stayed put. The game in Scotland still belongs to no one and everyone. Now that soul is up for grabs: the world wants a piece of St Andrews and the cheque books have landed.

Viewed as either pestilence or progress, the race to expand the St Andrews "brand" has seen the planning of new courses, new hotels, and new clubs, all cleverly cloaking themselves in the marketing myths of the royal and ancient burgh. The number of golf courses alone (there are currently eight) could double within five years.

Bill Ritchie, chairman of the Links Trust which administers the town's public courses, including the Elysian field of the Old Course, has been as diplomatic as he can on the outcome of the turf war. "St Andrews has become the focus for golf developers from around the world. The impact of these developments, both actual and proposed, remains to be seen." Clearly, a job in the United Nations secretariat awaits Mr Ritchie should he so choose.

Each year a quarter of million rounds of golf are played on the main courses in and around St Andrews. Although tourism statistics are poor for such a major industry, it is estimated that 700,000 visitors, golfers and non-golfers, annually descend on the Fife shrine. Those who look tense, worried and apprehensive are the true pilgrims, arriving in the Mecca of their religion to worship on a thin stretch of grass and whin that stretches from the heart of the old university town, out into wilds of the Eden Estuary. This is the Old Course. Some American cynics are less than respectful about its blessedness. "At first glance it looks like a flat green car park," said the writer Dan Jenkins. Indeed, Dan, but it's a very difficult car park to get into.

A routine round of golf on the Old Course costs £80. The Trust each October allocates sought-after tee times for the coming year. Applications are graded in date order; the earlier you apply the better your chance of being rewarded. Booking for a specific date and time ten years ahead are common. The Trust says it has a queue for 2005.

This is the egalitarian pathway. Route one for the wealthy is through the Keith Prowse Organisation and something they call the Old Course Experience which will see £1500 depart from the wallets of a select few (this includes one "Old" round and a two-night stay at the five-star Old Course Hotel).

However for most of us, entry to the Old Course is like the lottery of life: 50 per cent of all the tee times are held back for the daily ballot - entries by 2pm, winners announced for the following day's play at 4pm. In the spring and summer months, the Old Course offers a one in seven, to a nerve-jangling one in 12 chance of getting on. And with the epidemic of new developments and new courses, those odds will increase: Mecca, the Vatican, Mount Everest, whatever, is about to get tougher to climb.

After this year's Open Championships the first of the new courses will open six miles down the Fife coast from St Andrews at Kingsbarns. This has been funded by the US entrepreneur, Mark Parsinen. Involved at every stage, Parsinen and his team have created a world-class product, its classic modernity enhancing rather than challenging the tradition of St Andrews. If you fail in the Old Course ballot, Kingsbarns is one helluva consolation prize.

Next year, the first stage of Scotland's largest single tourist development will also open at Kingask. The £50 million, 209 bedroom, resort and conference centre, with its two golf courses (one being Sam Torrance's first course design) has aroused local passions like no other.

On the edge of this development cauldron other projects have quietly slipped into the shadows, presumably awaiting a better climate. The St Andrews International Golf Club (two courses, clubhouse and private lodges) was to have cost £25 million. Although withdrawn, a planning comeback should not be ruled out. Similarly, the developer behind Carnoustie's new course hotel also diplomatically withdrew his plan for a £100 million golf-and-hotel complex at Feddinch. This project, according to one planning insider, was described as "resting". Rumours of further new projects are as frequent as news of Rod Stewart with a new blonde.

So it takes nerve, vision and a lot of financial muscle to take on the sheer history of St Andrews, its residents and the local planning authorities. Dr Don Panoz, whose worldwide empire of hotels and resorts includes the Diablo Grande in California, the Raceway Hotel in Florida and the Chateau Elan in Georgia, has had the stamina to deliver the project at Kingask that has now curiously been christened "St Andrews Bay - A Chateau Elan Resort". The Arizona Hilton at Cumbernauld sounds equally appropriate, but then global marketing has always smacked of idiosyncrasy.

A few weeks ago Dr Panoz's motor racing team took on the challenge of the Le Mans 24 hour race, winning 5th and 6th places. So taking on the disgruntled of St Andrews - who still maintain any development threatens to ruin the very nature and soul of the town - and winning, was perhaps inevitable.

Penny Uprichards, despite losing to Panoz in Scotland's highest courts over her dismissed claim that planning regulations were not followed, still has faith: "Spoil this place with over-development and the next generation will never forgive us."

The environmental nightmare painted by Uprichards and her supporters portrays the potential daily hell of hundreds of hotel room residents and their rental cars zooming and in out of the mediaeval and ill-equipped streets of the old town. Tranquillity will be gone, in its place a golfing mono-culture that will kill off the pilgrims' zeal over the years.

But Dr Panoz, in Scotland after Le Mans to oversee the latest progress, believes such criticism is "misplaced". An entrepreneur who originally made his millions in the US pharmaceutical industry, he says he knows St Andrews Bay will be "carried out with style and class". And he's clear on where his resort will fit in. "The point is simple," he says. He doesn't want to take on the Old Course's history and traditions. His Chateau courses will "not try to duplicate ... because if you did, you'd end up with a poor impostor". He almost accepts the sanctity and mathematics of the Old Course's inability to meet increasing demand.

"Say you play the Old Course on day one. What do you do on day two, three and four?" He believes his Chateau St Andrews can attract more of the world's top people - and of course their top money - into a local economy predicted to benefit to the tune of £14 million annually from his development. "Sure there will a profit," says Panoz, "but going out of business with a derelict property would do this community no good."

The legal intervention from Mrs Uprichards - which held up building work for three months - he described as "mindless". However the development dissenters have yet to be dissuaded. They insist St Andrews' fame rests solely with the Old Course and more hotels and courses will mean more golfers and the chance of playing the Old Course will worsen.

The Holy Grail of an ecological and financial balance is the quest of a newly commissioned study. Mike Williamson, a management consultant appointed by Fife region, admits precise figures are difficult to come by. "Tourism is Scotland's most important industry, yet we cannot tell you the number of people who come to St Andrews to play golf, nor where they come from, nor precisely what they spend," he says. The estimates, based mostly on statistics from the Links Trust, say 60 per cent of all golf is played by locals. Most visitors come from the UK, and of the foreign players, 80 per cent are from the States. US visitors spend roughly £250 per day - much more than UK visitors - over a five day stay. So the chase for dollars is hot - and getting hotter.

However, not every new development is a challenge to tradition. The new £5 million extension to the Old Course Hotel - taking investment in the last decade alone to over £20 million - will add 16 new suites and 23 new bedrooms to the resort complex that lies along the famous 17th hole of the Old Course and looks out over all the St Andrews courses. As a hotel emotionally associated with a golf course it has few rivals anywhere in the world.

The Old Course Hotel has not always been loved. But it has slowly evolved, improved and updated itself with age into a world-class resort. The modern, minimalist design of its new suites and the care and attention to detail have now set an expensive standard that others will find difficult to follow. Both the expansion of the Old Course Hotel and the arrival of new restaurants in St Andrews like the equally minimalist West Port in the town's South Street, show what can be done without massive intrusion.

Behind the 17th, in the grounds of the university, is another of the town's new developments. The Gateway building, a strikingly impressive circular temple, will house a visitors' centre and museum for the ancient university on its lower floors. But for international golfers especially, with the foundation of each of the new courses and hotels, the opening in July of the St Andrews Golfing Society on the upper floors of the Gateway, is all part of the town's evolution.

The stuffiness of the old-era local clubs (always out of reach of visitors seeking to feel part of the tradition of St Andrews) has been swept away in favour a private £8 million luxury members' club destined to become the international 19th of St Andrews. A health club and gymnasium, bars and restaurants - including separate Japanese Teppanyaki, sushi and fine dining - all point to the change of gear the town is about to experience. Geoff Lang, the chief executive of the Society, says: "This complex has five-star facilities where members will be able to combine business and pleasure in the same visit providing the sense of belonging which they have been previously unable to experience." That's shorthand for the times they are a changin'.

For a town that can't identify when golf exactly started, and which trades in antiquity and the myth of unchanging history, welcoming the new was always going to be difficult. One note of optimism is that it has done all this before. The New Course, running along the seaward side of the Old, was built in 1883 and the New Club was established in 1902. Semper Nova, the New Club's motto, means: "Always new things". Considering James II tried to ban golf in the Scottish Parliament 600 years ago, its ability to tackle the new and survive seems relatively robust. For now.