Spanning centuries, the narrative follows golf’s evolution: from a humble pastime played on windswept links to the creation of a championship at Prestwick Golf Club to crown the Champion Golfer of the Year. The story follows unforgettable historical figures, including Regulus; Mary, Queen of Scots; John Paterson; James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany; Thomas Kincaid; John Rattray; Duncan Forbes; Prince Charles Edward Stuart; Robert Paterson; Allan Robertson; Hugh Lyon Playfair; Tom Morris; James Ogilvy Fairlie; Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton; and Willie Park.

Alongside these historical figures, richly imagined characters bring the world of golf vividly to life. They include Cleopas, the Greek sea captain who carried St. Andrew’s relics to Scotland; Gavin Macfarlane, a commoner who twice saved the life of a nobleman; Robert Wadsworth, a bowyer and early golf-club maker, with his son Fergus; Ian, a Leith miller undone by his devotion to golf; Robert Moore, a caddie and groundskeeper who advanced course design and competition. Other characters include Errol MacClure, a young solicitor whose love of golf and drink led to his demise; Malcolm Mackenzie, a gifted golfer scarred by war; and Edward MacColl Burns, who put Allan Robertson’s integrity to the test.

Readers discover defining moments in golf’s history: the three-thousand-nautical-mile voyage that brought St. Andrew’s relics to Scotland, the building of the Cathedral of St. Andrew, the Reformation, the founding of the Company of Edinburgh Golfers—the world’s first golfing society—and their creation of the earliest written Rules of Golf. The narrative covers the turmoil of the Jacobite Risings, the establishment of the Society of St. Andrews Golfers, the transformation of the Links of St. Andrews from twenty-two holes to eighteen, the rise of the golf professional, the invention of the guttie ball, the founding of Prestwick Golf Club, and the birth of golf’s greatest championship.

Blending myth, history, and sport, THE OPEN brings to life a world where golf is more than a game. Once read, you will never see golf, or THE OPEN, in quite the same way again.