Kingsbarns Links Golf's Past With Its Future

The Globe and Mail, 13 October 1999

Sir Michael Bonallack is standing in a formal room at Strathtyrum, an ancient estate very near the Old Course. Bonallack, won five British Amateurs and recently retired from his post of secretary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. He's talking golf, but not the Old Course or the R & A. His subject is the Kingsbarns Golf Links, an extraordinary course 10 kilometres due south of St. Andrews that will open next summer.

"Kingsbarns is very, very good," said Bonallack, who last month assumed the role of the R & A's captain. It's a role as a member rather than as an employee. "It's very difficult to get permission from the environmental authorities for linksland. This could be the last linksland that is granted permission."

Bonallack is obviously taken with Kingsbarns, a manufactured links with views of the North Sea from every hole. The Old Course, golf's most revered links, has hardly any such views. Kingsbarns, named for the village in which it is located, abuts the sea. At high tide the water foams over rocks. Kingsbarns is true to its seaside site.

Quickly, one realizes Kingsbarns is special, and that it will add a sorely needed new links to the St. Andrews area. Nothing can replace the Old Course, where the Open Championship will be played next July. But Kingsbarns is a worthy spiritual descendant of the Old Course. Bonallack knew that the moment he saw the property. He's seen most every superb links in the game. In his position as R & A secretary he was responsible for ensuring that the Open's success on some of the best linksland -- the Old Course, Carnoustie, Royal Birkdale, Muirfield, to name an impressive foursome.

Kingsbarns could hold an Open. Who knows? Already there is talk of the renewal of the Scottish Open. The tournament hasn't been played since 1996, after losing its sponsor.

There would be no better course for its resumption than Kingsbarns, and no better week than that prior to the Open Championship. A PGA European Tour event is held that week at the Loch Lomond Golf Club, a fine parkland course near Glasgow. But golfers prefer to prepare for the Open on a links.

Kingsbarns is a links through and through; it's adjacent to the sea and the ground is firm and fast. Tom Lehman, an Open champion, visited Kingsbarns during the Dunhill Cup that concluded Sunday at the Old Course. He found the 17th hole, for one, so worthy of study that he examined it at length.

The 17th is a par four of 480 yards from the back tee, and surges parallel to the sea toward a green set on ground slightly higher than the fairway. The fairway is full of humps and bumps and in a wind -- almost always present on a links -- the hole will test anybody. Even Lehman. Even Tiger Woods. Even Sergio Garcia.

"I have no doubt the course has championship potential," Bonallack said. He thought so much of Kingsbarns when Mark Parsinen, one of the course's owners, showed it to him, that he organized an association with the links through the R & A.

The R & A came up with £1-million ($2.4-million) as an interest-free loan to Kingsbarns. It received in return the right to 2,000 rounds at the course. These rounds will be made available to members of clubs in St. Andrews, Kingsbarns along with R & A members at reduced rates. There's long been too much pressure on the Old Course for tee times, from visitors especially. Now they and others will have another exceptional links to play.

Kingsbarns therefore will fill a need for more courses here that would grab the avid golfer's attention. Peter Thomson designed the Duke's course just outside St. Andrews, and it's an attractive parkland layout. But the area needed another powerful links.

Golf had been played on the Kingsbarns property as far back as 1793. It was rudimentary, seaside golf that stopped when the Second World War broke out. The Ministry of Defence took over the land for military maneuvers. Later the golfing ground sat, waiting for somebody with a vision and the means to make something happen.

Then Mark Parsinen showed up. Parsinen grew up in Minneapolis and studied at the London School of Economics, in 1969, before living in London during the mid-1970s. He became enamoured of links golf -- its strategic values, the uncluttered look of links ground -- and hoped to get involved in such a course.

Parsinen, having succeeded in business in California's Silicon Valley, also developed Granite Bay Golf Club, a private course near Sacramento. There he worked with designer Kyle Phillips. Phillips told him about the Kingsbarns land, and he visited the property during a vacation.

"I was there for 20 minutes and knew I had to do a course on the site," Parsinen said at Strathtyrum during dinner. "My wife told me to go for it."

Parsinen engaged Phillips to design the course, and formed a small ownership group. Soon he talked to Bonallack, wanting to ensure the R & A along with the people of St. Andrews knew that he and his partners were not perceived as interlopers. They wanted to be accepted as part of the community.

"We had a 15-minute talk scheduled," Parsinen said of his meeting with Bonallack. "It turned into two hours. We talked about soils, about the principles of links golf. He came to believe we could do something that would do justice to the site."

Developers are moving into St. Andrews, because golfers the world over make pilgrimages to the Old Course. But not everything is being done in good taste. Kingsbarns is. Otherwise it wouldn't be accepted by the R & A and its long-time course superintendent Walter Woods. Kingsbarns has hired Woods as its greenkeeping consultant. He visits the property almost every day.

Kingsbarns looks as though it's been there for centuries. The Old Course now has a friend, a kindred spirit. And that's what St. Andrews and its visitors need.