Visiting St Andrews in Fife, Scotland - The Home of Golf
Visiting St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland,
the home of golf, is like visiting living history. This is not only for the obvious reason of it actually being the place where the game of golf was developed, but also for the fact of its having human settlements in the area going back at least 7,000 years or more. It is also home to Scotland's oldest institution of higher learning, the University of Saint Andrews, which was founded between 1410 and 1413.
This town and former royal burgh of around 17,000 people is named after Saint Andrew the Apostle, venerated in the Catholic Church as a mid-1st century Christian missionary and brother of Saint Peter. It is notable that from the medieval era until the Scottish Reformation in 1560, the town was the Catholic religious capital of the nation, with its bishop being the leader of the Scottish church.
Saint Andrew's is, indeed, the ancestral home of golf. The Royal and Ancient Golf Club, founded in 1754, continues to oversee the administration of the game of golf the world over, except in the U.S. and Mexico. The town's golf course - Saint Andrews, of course - also plays frequent host to the British Open, one of the five major golf championships on the Professional Golfers' Association tour.
It actually wasn't until the late 19th century that the town began to recover from the ravages of time and the activities carried on during the Reformation back in the 16th century. Real recovery for Saint Andrews began to go full-bore in the 1960s. Part of this is directly attributable to the growing worldwide popularity of golfing as a recreation sport.
The Scottish council area Fife, which is the locality in which the historical town of St. Andrews resides, enjoys a current population of around 361,000 people. Of particular historic note, Fife is one of the original Pictish kingdoms of the first millennium - up to the 10th century - and is still sometimes referred to as the "Kingdom of Fife," in Scotland. Both St. Andrews and Fife are fine examples of classic Scottish culture and living.
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