Fairway to Heaven

July 2015 - The Rotarian Magazine

This month, golf goes home. It happens every five years, when the game’s oldest and grandest event, the Open Championship (sometimes called the “British Open” by blasphemers), returns to St. Andrews. For a week in July, an ancient little town on Scotland’s rocky eastern coast hosts hordes of visitors, including Rotary club members from all over the world.

Of course, some Rotarians are already there.

Founded in 1927, the Rotary Club of St. Andrews spends most of its time the way you might expect: hosting charity events, travel and historical lectures, concerts, an annual ball, a monthly bridge tournament, and plenty of convivial networking. Every January there’s a Robert Burns lunch, complete with readings of the national poet’s verses and heaping helpings of haggis, the Scottish dish made of sheep’s liver, heart, and lungs, along with suet and spicy oatmeal, cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. (Call it an acquired taste.) There are fundraisers for the Rotaract club at the University of St. Andrews (where Prince William met Kate). But in years divisible by five, when the town becomes the hub of international sport for a week, the Rotary club gets caught up in the excitement.