When I finished writing THE OPEN and began the long process of editing, I had spent years researching kings and queens, golfers and citizens, burghs and towns, castles and palaces, battles and battlefields—and, especially, historic golf courses.

But for all that research, those places existed in my mind only through books, photographs, maps, and Google Earth.

So, in late October 2024, my wife, Mary Kay, and I spent ten days in Scotland. I wanted to see and feel the places I had spent years writing about, stand where history had happened, and experience the landscapes that helped shape Scotland and the game of golf.

Our travels took us to many of Scotland's legendary golfing places: Musselburgh Links, St. Andrews and the Old Course, Prestwick, Troon, Turnberry, and Dornoch.

But one of the most meaningful places we visited was somewhere that, at first glance, might seem less remarkable.

Leith Links.

 

Walking Into Golf History

We walked Leith Links in the middle of the afternoon on our first day in Scotland. The sky was overcast, and a light rain was falling. Somehow, the weather seemed fitting.

There was something almost timeless about walking across that open ground, knowing that golfers had played there for centuries.

Leith Links is one of the most fascinating places in golf history because it takes us back to a time when a golf course could consist of holes laid out across open common ground. There were no carefully constructed fairways, manicured greens, or strategically designed hazards like those we associate with golf courses today.

The landscape itself was the course.

 

Leith Before the Rules

The earliest surviving reference connecting Leith specifically with golf dates to 1554. The reference comes from a dispute involving leather workers and shoemakers from Edinburgh and golf-ball makers of North Leith.

That small historical detail tells us something remarkable: by the middle of the sixteenth century, golf was established enough in Leith for craftsmen to make equipment for the game.

When I try to picture Leith Links in the 1500s, I don't see manicured fairways, carefully measured tees, or perfectly maintained greens. I imagine open coastal common land, sandy ground, rough grass, uneven lies, and natural mounds.

People played golf across the landscape. There was no standardized number of holes. There were no standardized clubs. The land dictated the game.

And that land had a history long before golfers arrived.

The mounds known as Giant's Brae and Lady Fyfe's Brae are traditionally associated with the Siege of Leith in 1560, when English and Scottish Protestant forces besieged the French garrison in Leith. Known as Somerset's Battery and Pelham's Battery, respectively, they remain reminders that the ground later used by golfers had once been part of a landscape of warfare.

One of the earliest named golfers associated with Leith Links was John Monro, Bishop of Argyll, who played there in 1619. By then, Leith was firmly established in the early story of golf.

Golf was being played there centuries before it became the organized sport we know today.

Leith itself was also a fascinating environment for the development of the game. It was a busy port, filled with sailors, merchants, craftsmen, travelers, and tradesmen. It was a world of commerce and movement, quite different from the image we sometimes have of early golf as an exclusively secluded pastime of gentlemen.

Walking across the Links, I found myself wondering about the people who had walked that same ground hundreds of years earlier.

What did their clubs look like?

What did the golf balls look like?

How far could they hit them?

And perhaps most interestingly, what did they think they were creating?

They certainly could not have imagined what golf would eventually become.

 

The Extraordinary Year of 1744

For me, this is where Leith Links becomes especially important to the story I wanted to tell in THE OPEN.

In 1744, the golfers of Leith organized what is regarded as the first documented public golf competition. The Royal Burgh of Edinburgh agreed to provide a silver club as the prize, but required the golfers to establish an organized society and create a written set of rules.

The result was the formation of the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith and the creation of the Articles & Laws in Playing at Golf.

The competition was won by John Rattray, a surgeon and accomplished golfer and archer. Rattray became closely associated with those first written rules and represents one of the important figures in the transition from golf as an informal pastime to an organized game—with golfing societies, established rules, and competitions.

That transformation is one of the reasons Leith Links matters so much.

Standing there nearly three centuries later, I wasn't simply looking at an old piece of ground. I was standing in a place where golf began taking some of its first steps toward becoming the organized game that would eventually spread around the world.

 

Walking the Original Five Holes

In 1744, the Leith golfers' layout consisted of only five holes.

Nearly three centuries later, I was walking along the path of that original layout when I came upon a statue of John Rattray.

He stands in the dress of an eighteenth-century gentleman, upright and self-assured, with the bearing of a prosperous Edinburgh professional. There is something formal and dignified about him, but he does not seem austere.

His posture and expression give him an approachable, almost genial quality. I found myself imagining that the man beneath that respectable exterior might have been every bit as enthusiastic about golf as those who would follow him.

As Mary Kay and I continued along the Links, something happened that made the history feel remarkably close.

Not far from the statue, we came upon four middle-aged Scottish men crossing the concrete walkway that now bisects the Links.

I stopped them.

Perhaps my Pittsburgh accent caught their attention. I asked if they could tell me which of the various mounds were Giant's Brae and Lady Fyfe's Brae.

The men were eager to help. We talked for a few minutes, and then one of them asked why I was so interested in the two mounds.

I explained that I was an author who had written a book about the origins of The Open Championship and that I had come to Scotland to visit the places I had written about.

They seemed genuinely pleased to hear about the book and about Leith Links' place in it.

That brief encounter has stayed with me.

There I was, an American who had spent years researching Scottish golf from thousands of miles away, finally walking the ground where some of the earliest chapters of the game had unfolded.

And there, on Leith Links, were four local men who knew the landscape I had spent so much time trying to understand.

For a few minutes, history, research, and the present day came together.

 

Why You Have to Go There

Leith Links gave me exactly what I had hoped for.

It enabled me to walk through golf's history—not simply by reading about it, but by standing in the landscape where that history had happened.

I came to Scotland because I wanted to see the places I had written about.

But standing on Leith Links, I discovered that seeing a place is different from reading about it.

The ground feels different.

The landscape tells you things a book cannot.

The salt air from the Firth of Forth clears your mind.

And sometimes, you meet people who help bring that history to life.

As Mary Kay and I stood there in the rain, I realized that sometimes the best way to understand history is not to read another page about it.

Sometimes, you have to go there.