- AddressPrestongrange House, Prestonpans EH32 9RP, UK
Royal Musselburgh Golf Club dates back to 1774 and their Old Club Cup is one of the oldest golf trophies still being competed for annually. If you think you may have seen the trophy before (pictured here) then maybe you have as it now sits in the Golf Museum near the 18th green of the Old Course at St Andrews.
The club played over the Old Course in Musselburgh for 150 years, sharing it for a long spell at the end of the 19th century with The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society and Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society. These three clubs, along with the R&A and Royal Blackheath, are the only ones to predate the club, making it the 6th oldest golf society in the world.
One by one, the other clubs moved away to other venues and so too did Royal Musselburgh in 1925 when they moved a couple of miles east to Prestongrange House at Prestonpans, on a twenty five year lease from the Grant Suttie family. The club still leases their land on the same site (and have done so since 1958) from the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation. King William perhaps gave Prestongrange House to Robert de Quincy in 1165 and there's no doubt this magnificent building is one of the most impressive clubhouses in Scotland.
The new Royal Musselburgh course was designed by the great James Braid with F.G. Hawtree and they laid out the 18 holes over beautiful parkland situated on elevated ground overlooking the Firth of Forth near Prestonpans, the site of the 1745 victory of Bonnie Prince Charlie against the Hanoverian army of Sir John Cope. When additional land became available within the estate, Mungo Park was invited to construct some new holes and the remodelled course reopened for play in 1938.
Only four of the fourteen par four holes on the 6,237-yard (par 70) course are longer than 400 yards so golfers are able to reach the green in regulation at most holes – even the solitary par five on the card, the 477-yard 9th hole, named “Jimmy Braid” is well within reach in three shots from the tee. Distance is not the main consideration at Royal Musselburgh; precision off the tee and accuracy of the approach are what matter most.
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James Braid was born in 1870 in Earlsferry, the adjoining village to Elie in the East Neuk of Fife. He became a member of Earlsferry Thistle aged fifteen and was off scratch by his sixteenth birthday.
