Why are golf courses 18 holes?
The answer revolves around The (British) Open being played at St. Andrews
A quick sports diversion. . . .
Why do golf courses have 18 holes?
The standard answer is that St. Andrews has 18 holes. But it had 22 holes before it was reduced to 18 in 1764. So is there something magic about 18?
Look at the other early courses in existence in 1860. Leith Links (where the rules of golf were originally developed) had 5 holes, which were played twice = 10 holes. Musselburgh (near Edinborough) originally had 7 holes, expanded to 8 in 1838. Prestwick, similar in prestige to St. Andrews, had 12 holes. Carnoustie (one of the legendary links course) had 10 holes, same as Leith. North Berwick had 6 holes, played twice = 12 holes, same as Prestwick. Kinghorn had 9 holes. And then there were two established courses that predated A.D. 1600, which were the two largest: Montrose, with 25 holes, and St. Andrews. So the truth was that people in the early-to-mid 1800s seemed to look at 8-12 holes as the ideal number of holes for a round. When Royal Liverpool was built in 1869, it had 9 holes, then almost immediately expanded to 12.
So in 1870 it seemed far from obvious what the ideal course size would be. So what boosted course size to 18 holes, similar to St. Andrews? An answer that is surely appropriate this week, with The (British) Open being played at St. Andrews: The Open itself.
In 1859, the club pro at St. Andrews (who was considered to be the best golfer in Scotland) died. Old Tom Morris, the club pro at Prestwick (who had also built the 12-hole course) thought he was most likely the best golfer in Scotland now. So he and the members of Prestwick decided to organize an invitational tournament to determine the new best golfer. The tournament consisted of three trips around Prestwick in one day: thus, 36 holes of golf. Like boxing, the prize for winning the tournament was a jeweled championship belt. Morris and Prestwick decided to make this an annual tournament, and to encourage people to come back, they set up a rule that, if anyone won the championship belt three years in a row, he could keep it permanently and be proclaimed the best golfer in Scotland. The first year, the tournament came down to a battle between Morris and St. Andrews’ best golfer, Willie Park, Sr. Park won. The honor of “best golfer in Scotland” stayed with St. Andrews.
The first tournament was a surprising success, and more people wanted to participate. So for the second year, the organizers at Prestwick declared that anyone, amateur or professional, could enter and play in it. As a result, they called the tournament The Open (it never became the British Open until the center of world golf moved to the U.S. in the 1920s). Like the first year, the tournament generally came down to a battle between Morris and Willie Park, Sr. (Morris won four and Park won three of the first eight). And the quality of the course at Prestwick was the best in Scotland, which also drew players. In fact, Old Tom Morris, who was originally from St. Andrews, was lured back to St. Andrews in 1864, with the task of bringing St. Andrews up to the quality of Prestwick. But then, in the middle of this transition, Tom Morris's 17-year-old son, called Young Tom Morris, started playing in the 9th tournament, and he immediately won it three straight years. End of tournament, we now know who the best golfer in Scotland is, thanks for coming, have a nice life.
Except. . . .
Golfers had liked the tournament. A lot. And they didn't like the fact that there wasn't one the next year (1871). Young Tom, who was newly married, had the valuable belt, and he wasn’t about to give it up. But Old Tom didn’t want The Open to die, because he liked the prestige it brought to his old course (Prestwick), and he wanted to extend that to his current course (St. Andrews).
So there was a meeting called between the three main governing bodies of golf in Scotland: Prestwick, St. Andrews, and the Edinburgh Company (which owned Leith Links but now played at Musselburgh, because Leith Links had became overcrowded with only 5 holes). The three groups decided to contribute for a new trophy (a claret jug) and to rotate the tournament between them in the order Prestwick, St. Andrews, Edinburgh. But how to make it fair when they all had different numbers of holes? (Remember: Prestwick 12, St. Andrews 18, Musselburgh 8.)
The solution was clear. At Prestwick, the tournament had required 3 times around the course, or 36 holes. So why not standardize the tournament at 36 holes, no matter where it was played? That would mean that the Edinburgh Company would have to build an extra hole at Musselburgh, even though they didn’t own the course, and then the tournament would play three rounds when at Prestwick, two rounds when at St. Andrews, and four rounds when at Musselburgh. And that's exactly what happened from 1872 to 1884. Young Tom Morris won again in 1872, but sadly he died shortly thereafter.
But, as the tournament became more popular, it started to get crowded . . . and the pace of play slowed down (still an issue with golf all these years later). And it soon became clear that the pace of play slowed down the most at the course with the fewest holes (Musselburgh), slowed down somewhat less with three more holes (Prestwick), and slowed down very little at the largest course (St. Andrews). It became far faster and easier to play two rounds in one day at St. Andrews than three rounds in one day at Prestwick or, worse yet, four rounds in one day at Musselburgh. Despite being played during the long Scotland summers, it became hard to finish the tournament before darkness set in when it was played at either Prestwick or Musselburgh. So Prestwick bought more land and had Old Tom Morris build six more holes in 1882, making it 18 holes, the same size as St. Andrews. Now, starting in 1884, it only had to be played twice, just like St. Andrews.
But Musselburgh couldn't get any more land, and anyway the Edinburgh Company were just guests there. Carnoustie had expanded to 18 holes in a bid to lure The Open away from Musselburgh (again with Old Tom Morris designing the eight new holes), but the Edinburgh Company didn’t want to give the tournament up. So the Edinburgh Company bought its own undeveloped land after the 1889 tournament at Musselburgh ended in near-total darkness and built a new course a little bit farther away, which it called Muirfield. It also had Old Tom Morris design the course, and it also decided to build 18 holes, so it would match both St. Andrews and Prestwick, as well as the pretender Carnoustie. Thus, The Open would now rotate among three 18-hole courses, and each would only need to be played twice in the one-day tournament.
But Musselburgh felt jilted. The total prize pot for The Open was £ 25 (and keeping the claret jug for the year). For 1892, the first time that The Open would be held at Muirfield, Musselburgh decided to host its own tournament on the exact same date — with a prize pot of £ 30. How would the Edinburgh Company respond?
With even more money.
The Edinburgh Company boosted the prize pot for 1892 from £ 25 to £ 100 (with a winners share of £ 30). To afford that extra prize money, the Edinburgh Company also decided to boost the tournament from 1 day (36 holes) to 2 days (72 holes), thus generating extra spectator fees and also getting contributions from local hotels, because golfers now had no choice but to stay overnight. The tournament has remained 72 holes ever since. The increased prize pool and overnight stays made the three sponsoring groups willing to move the tournament to other venues (in return for financial contributions), which also increased the appeal to those venues of hosting the tournament (and bringing in tourists). But to be able to host, those other venues realized that (like Carnoustie) they also had to build 18-hole courses.
And sure enough, first St. George's in England (built in England at the same time as Muirfield and soon designated Royal St. George's) and then Royal Liverpool in England (built by Old Tom Morris' brother and expanded to 18 holes around the same time as Carnoustie and Prestwick) joined the rotation of Open courses. (Carnoustie never hosted the tournament until 1931, due to the opposition of the Edinburgh Company.). The idea that a meaningful tournament had to be played on an 18-hole course and consist of 72 holes became standard both in the U.K. and in the rest of the world. But 18 holes didn’t become the standard just to imitate St. Andrews but rather for pace of play reasons.
For what it's worth, The Open remained a two-day tournament with 36 holes per day until 1926. By that time, the U.S. had already experienced the legendary miracle at the heart of U.S. golf tales: the victory of the amateur Francis Ouimet over the British superstars Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in the 1913 U.S. Open outside of Boston. The U.S. Open began as an exact clone of the British Open, down to the use of 18-hole courses. And right now we’ll get to see who is the Champion Golfer of the Year 2022 at St. Andrews in the next couple of days. But that’s a topic for another time.
Be seeing you.