• Donald Steel becomes the first Architect to work at St. Andrews
  since Harry Colt in 1913.
• The design work revolved around the production of a detailed Master Plan.
• The Eden and Jubilee Courses were redesigned.
• The Strathtyrum is a new design.
• The par 3 Balgove was rehoused.

Donald Steel was the first golf course architect since Harry Colt designed the Eden in 1913 to carry out significant work at St Andrews. His comprehensive brief in the 1980s included extensive modifications to the Jubilee together with the production of a Master Plan for the development of the exciting new Golf Centre, now such a familiar landmark in the town.

An integral part of the plan was to base the start and finish of the Eden outside Pilmour Cottage, the offices of the St Andrews Links Trust. In addition, there was the requirement to set aside an area for a driving range and other practice facilities so sadly lacking at the time; to embrace a revised Eden on land acquired to the west; to relocate the Balgove (the most basic of the St Andrews courses) and to design a new Strathtyrum on former wet potato fields. However, by means of intensive drainage and imaginative landscaping, it was converted to a course playable throughout the year. What is more, it makes up for its modest length with interesting greens that are well in keeping with the traditions of St Andrews. They reward good positional play from the tee and offer a rich variety of approach shots.

It was opened for play in 1993.

By common consent, the aims of the Links Trust have been ideally served by Steel’s Master Plan. Together with the building of a clubhouse near the start of the New and Jubilee, the needs of thousands of annual visitors have been admirably served, the Jubilee superseding the Old as perhaps the most difficult of the six courses. The Jubilee, mingling with the dunes, has more changes of level than the others while the revised Eden enjoys the unique luxury of two loops of nine holes based on its clubhouse. Mark Twain may have had the Old course at St Andrews in mind when voicing one of his lesser known complaints about golf that “it takes you too far from the clubhouse”.

As James Finegan remarked in his book, Blasted Heaths and Blessed Greens, “The powers that be have been tinkering with the Jubilee for about a hundred years, and they have finally gotten it right. Donald Steel, golf architect and writer, can take a bow for his imaginative makeover of a course that I once believed to be the second worst in the world. The net of it is that the once-despised eighteen is now the strongest test in town”.

By way of appreciation to all the reorganisation, the St Andrews Links Trust presented Steel with a silver quaich at a special dinner in 1994. In a worldwide competition to mark the Jubilee Course Centenary in 1997, the 15th hole was christened “Steel’s Gem”.