IN ITS 600-YEAR HISTORY, St. Andrews (home of the British Open, July 16-19) has granted reciprocal playing rights to precisely one golf course. Nine time zones from the Firth of Forth, in South Australia’s desert mining settlement Coober Pedy (pop. 3,500), is Opal Fields Golf Club. In 2003, while filming a documentary about opal mining, a visiting film crew discovered that locals had made good on a drunken decision in 1976 to build a golf course in the impossible-to-irrigate Outback.

The producer thought it would be funny to simultaneously interview via satellite St. Andrews’ then-general manager, Alan McGregor, and Opal Fields’ then-president, Kim Kelly. Weren’t there some similarities between this wild Australian bush abstraction and the “home of golf” at the Old Course? During the interview, Kelly recalls, “I kept saying, ‘What about reciprocal rights with St. Andrews?’ He said, ‘You give me an opal mine and I’ll think about it.'”

Kelly promptly staked a mining claim near the course, sent a package to St. Andrews with photos of the claim and threw in a few opals and a how-to brochure. A letter from McGregor, whose humor is apparently as breezy as the North Sea, arrived shortly thereafter. Rights had been granted. “I cannot describe how delighted we are,” McGregor wrote. “The trustees were completely speechless, probably in admiration.” There was, of course, a catch. McGregor never used the words “Old Course.” Opal Fields’ members would have the privilege of playing the Balgove Course, the only nine-hole layout in St. Andrews. Each January.

St. Andrews’ kooky deal with an Australian golf club

Illustration of the stickmen playing golf on a white background