Controversial new golf course in St Andrews gets go ahead

The Feddinch Mains site will be the first new golf course in St Andrews since 2008.

There’s going to be a brand new course in the Home of Golf for the first time since 2008

Controversial plans for a new golf course in St Andrews have been given the green light.

Various developers have been trying to transform the site at Feddinch Mains, around two miles south of the Auld Grey Toon, since the proposals were first put forward more than 20 years ago.

A course was even laid out in 2004 with the help of Tom Weiskopf, the 1973 Open champion and a renowned architect in his later years, and a design bearing his name, which runs adjacent to the Duke’s course, was partially completed.

At the time, Weiskopf, who died in 2022, described the project as “the most comprehensive golfing experience in the British lsles” and his “dream project”.

But while the 16-time PGA Tour winner never got to see the project come to fruition, its latest owners, Alvarez & Marsal Golf, have had the thumbs up to move forward with their “site-wide masterplan”.

The facility at Feddinch Mains will include an 18-hole championship course, a par-3 layout and high-end practice areas, a 250-meter-long clubhouse, as well as a luxury hotel and spa and six detached guest cottages.

“Following extensive consultation with Fife Council, the local community, and other key stakeholders, this approval is a major milestone in regenerating a site that has remained undeveloped for 20 years,” Tyler Kirsch, A&M’s managing director, said.

The plans, though, have been fiercely opposed by locals.

One told The Courier last year: “It’s a private members-only club on a gated site. Once again we’re selling off chunks of St Andrews so that overseas businessmen can profit with no benefit to locals.

“Residents at Feddinch are not nimbys. They are very much in favour of a golf course – but they want it done in a way that is sympathetic.”

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SNP councillor David MacDiarmid, meanwhile, issued words of caution.

“It’s going to cost many, many millions of pounds,” he said.

“Will this be done in one or in dribs and drabs where some of it may never be done? You kind of lose faith when things like that happen. We can give this the go-ahead today and in 20 years it still might not be done.”

But Kirsch added: “We are confident our project will bring lasting benefits to the local community, and we remain committed to ongoing engagement as it progresses.”

A&M, a North American firm which also own and operate Paako Ridge Golf Club in the US and Hogs Head Golf Club in Ireland, bought the Feddinch Mains site from Dundee United Football Club owner Mark Ogren for £7 million three years ago.

If it does happen, it will be the first new course in the Home of Golf since the St Andrews Links Trust’s Castle course opened in 2008.