Welcome from the Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Address by Professor Dame Sally Mapstone DBE FRSE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor
Good afternoon, everyone. It is my happy duty as Principal and Vice-Chancellor to welcome you to these very special golfing ceremonies on behalf of both the University of St Andrews and the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council. As that indicates, today’s event is constituted by two distinct rituals. The first of these is the University of St Andrews Golf Graduation Ceremony, in which the University will bestow honorary doctorates upon golfers of distinction whilst observing the ceremonial conventions of our graduation tradition. The second element will be overseen by the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council, our collaborators and co-hosts for today’s event, and will comprise the bestowal of Honorary Citizenship of St Andrews upon Dr Jack Nicklaus.
The University and Community Council’s co-organisational efforts have been supplemented by the support of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, led by their Chief Executive – and a great friend of the University – Martin Slumbers. Between the University and the R&A, St Andrews is home to two venerable institutions of international standing, and this ceremony exemplifies the close working we enjoy year-round. The broader coalescence of town and gown activities today is symbolic of the harmonious interdependence of our town and University throughout the year, and also of the centrality of golf to our respective and shared cultures. In honouring today’s guests, we are collectively celebrating the sport of golf and the enrichment it brings to our corner of the world. I am delighted that all of you can share these celebrations with us.
The graduation tradition which we observe today has taken place at St Andrews since the second decade of the fifteenth century when the University was founded, and some of the rituals that were established in the 1400s remain an integral part of the ceremony. These honour our history and signify the assumption of each honorand’s place within an institution that has done as much as any other to shape our modern world. St Andrews is Scotland’s first and foremost university, the third-oldest in the English-speaking world, and one of the twenty-five oldest still operating. Across 609 years, students and academics have gathered here to build and disseminate knowledge, and their ambition has proven resilient to the challenges mounted against them: the religious and political regimes that have reared and crumbled; the pandemics and wars that have beaten at the doors of this town.
Ours is not, however, a story of survival, but of leadership. St Andrews has been at the vanguard of political, cultural, and intellectual developments since the University’s inception, and our people have steered the hands of monarchs and parliaments since our earliest days. The golfers who will formally join this academic family today have demonstrated leadership across their careers, and they embody many of the other skills and values which we seek to instil in our students and which make today’s golfing honorands a natural fit within our community: the value of hard work; the necessity of perseverance; and the humility to embody in success. Golf teaches us many things about life and the bonds we share, and it is clear that our University and its people thrive, in part, because of the cultural values that take root upon the courses that frame our home town.
As one of the world’s premier institutions of teaching and learning – and as the UK’s number one university according to The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide for 2022 – our academics commit themselves to answering the most challenging and urgent questions of the day. Foremost amongst these is a question that has plagued philosophers and historians since our earliest days, and that is: which came first, the University or golf.
There is some, but inconclusive, evidence to suggest that golf was played before the University’s formal foundation in 1413. Records from 1382 demonstrate that sports were taking place on ‘the sands of the Eden near the boundaries of the city of St Andrews,’ including at a sporting tournament which ‘a concourse of people […] gathered’ to observe. It is unclear whether golf featured in this particular recreational competition, but it was certainly enjoyed by students and scholars of the early University – so much so that it was nationally banned by three successive Scottish kings in the second half of the fifteenth century, James II, III, and IV of Scotland, because it distracted young men from practising archery – an important skill for the defence of the realm.
Golf returned triumphantly in the sixteenth century, and the University’s Special Collections contains what is informally referred to as the ‘Golf Charter’ – a formal agreement dating from 1552 between John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, and the citizens of the town, and in which the first direct reference to the playing of golf on the links to the north-west of St Andrews is made. These were not the only uses, however, to which the links would be put, and that agreement stipulates, and I quote, that ‘the common holding of said links’ would be used for ‘the pasturing of goods, cutting and carrying off [of] turf and sods, playing of golf [and] football, shooting [of] game, [and] all other manner[s] of pastime.’ Shooting, footballing, and the cutting up of grass are largely long-forsaken activities on the Links, and as golf emerged as the preeminent activity on these lands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it developed to bear much greater resemblance to the Old Course we know today. It was a twenty-two-hole course until 1764, and it was not until a century later, in circa 1863, that Old Tom Morris – a legendary figure of our town – intervened to make it the famous eighteen-hole course that perseveres.
The Old Course is now amongst the oldest, most special, and most-beloved courses in the world. To play it just once can be the highlight of a golfing career; to win a tournament over its storied humps and hollows is one of the highest accolades it is possible to attain. The Open Championship has taken place over the Old Course twenty-nine times to date, and the 150th Open Championship which takes place this week will mark the thirtieth occurrence of this landmark tournament in St Andrews.
The special Golf Graduation Ceremony hosted today by the University is the latest iteration of a ceremonial tradition that coincides with the Open, at which we celebrate and honour golf’s leading luminaries and players. Across forty years, we have awarded honorary doctorates to thirteen such individuals – recognising their excellence on the course, their broader attributes and qualities, and the inspiration these cumulatively provide to our students and staff, and to our town and world more broadly. The first golfing honorary degree was presented to Dr Jack Nicklaus who received his Honorary Doctorate of Laws in 1984 at a ceremony just like this one, six years after he won the Open at St Andrews for the second time in 1978. It is a sincere privilege to welcome Dr Nicklaus back to the Younger Hall today to receive his Honorary Citizenship, which will later be presented by the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council. This award is a modern take on an earlier award, the Freedom of the City of St Andrews, which was awarded to only two Americans: Benjamin Franklin and Bobby Jones. Like Bobby Jones before him, Jack Nicklaus’ ascension today is an historic occasion that will be recorded in the annals of our town and sporting histories, and I speak on behalf of all gathered when I register my appreciation for his presence.
Twelve further golfing icons have received honorary doctorates from the University since Nicklaus, including Gary Player in 1995, and both Severiano Ballesteros and Colin Montgomerie at a Millennium Golf Graduation ceremony in 2000. Peter Alliss was recognised alongside Nick Faldo and Peter Thomson in 2005 at a ceremony to mark the 134th Open Championship in St Andrews, and Charlie Sifford received an honorary doctorate the following year. Our first female golf honorand was Renee Powell in 2008, an alumna who has done so very much to change the racial and class profile of golf across the world – and in whose honour one of our halls of residence is named. Renee’s award was followed by three further presentations in 2010 at a ceremony to mark the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Open Championship’s establishment in 1860 – with degrees bestowed upon Tom Watson, Padraig Harrington, and Arnold Palmer, and the most recent award was made to Paul Lawrie in 2018. Five golfers of distinction will today join this cohort of honorary graduates: José María Olazábal, Catriona Matthew OBE, Lee Trevino, Sir Bob Charles, and Sandy Lyle MBE. It is an honour to welcome them and their guests here today.
The Younger Hall in which we are gathered has been the home of our Graduation ceremonies since it opened in 1929, and it has accommodated each of the special golfing ceremonies. The rituals which we observe today will unite each of our honorands with the golfing legends – and the graduates, academics, royals, politicians, and change-makers, who have crossed the Younger Hall’s stage before them. The first of these rituals you have already witnessed as St Salvator’s Chapel Choir initiated proceedings with a rendition of the Gaudeamus, a traditional academic song of celebration, which accompanied a procession that comprised members of the University’s Court and senior management team, alongside academics and members of staff, members of the Community Council, students, and – of course, our honorands. The University Chaplain, the Reverend Dr Donald MacEwan, has delivered the Opening Prayer, and as Vice-Chancellor, I preside over these ceremonies and am invested with the authority to award honorary degrees – the presentation of which will immediately follow this introduction.
The conferral of these doctoral awards will be conducted partly in Latin, following St Andrews’ tradition, and I will call upon the laureators to present their honorands for degrees which I will bestow with Latin phrases – one of which, for example, translates as:
I raise you honorarily to the rank of Doctor of Laws, and to symbolise this I place upon you this cap.
The precise moment of bestowal occurs when the graduate’s cap, or birretum, touches the head of the graduand. This academic cap has been used in every ceremony since December 1696, when it was acquired from a St Andrews tailor, and it symbolises the ascension of our honorands into honorary graduates and their assumption of a place within our alumni community. For the avoidance of doubt, the cap is regularly dry cleaned.
We will first bestow honorary degrees upon José María Olazábal, Catriona Matthew OBE, and Lee Trevino. A musical interlude will then be delivered by St Salvator’s Chapel, and the presentation of the remaining honorary doctorates upon Sir Bob Charles and Sandy Lyle MBE will follow. St Salvator’s Chapel will then return to deliver the final musical interlude, and we will then move to the second element of today's ceremonies: the presentation of Honorary Citizenship of St Andrews upon Dr Jack Nicklaus by the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council.
The Honorary Citizenship element of this ceremony has been planned carefully by the Community Council, and they will also oversee its bestowal. David Strachan, an officer of the Council, will compère the Citizenship Ceremony; a laureation will be delivered by John Devlin, a resident of the town; and the Honorary Citizenship will formally be bestowed by Martin Passmore, the Community Council’s Deputy Provost. Jack Nicklaus will make a short address when the bestowal is complete, and the ceremony will then conclude with the Benediction and the graduation procession from the Hall and into the town. The procession will culminate in St Salvator’s Quad where there will be an opportunity to gather with friends and colleagues for photos, and celebrations will continue throughout the afternoon at the Garden Party on Lower College Lawn – at which you are all warmly invited to join us.
Graduation is a ritual of transformation. The awards we present today will transform our honorands into something which they were not before: graduates of the University of St Andrews; and for Dr Nicklaus, an Honorary Citizen of our hometown, the Home of Golf. Graduation is also a ritual of celebration and thanksgiving, and we extend an invitation for you to share in that with us: to carry through this day, and the spectacular golfing week ahead, the spirit of collegiality that resides at the heart of this sport – and the ways the sport and its values have shaped our University and town for the better. Let us today, however, focus that appreciation on the six legendary ambassadors of golf in our midst, whom it is our privilege now to welcome to our University and town.