St Andrews Links Blog

Commemorative 2015 logo announced

In July 2015, the 144^th Open Championship will return to the Home of Golf. We wanted to develop a unique logo that would celebrate the essence of the Old Course and its remarkable relationship with The Open.

St Andrews has played host to The Open more than any other venue, and history has been repeatedly made on the iconic Old Course. Who can forget Tiger Woods’ setting the new Open Championship scoring record with 19 under par in 2000; or Jack Nicklaus waving goodbye from the Swilcan Bridge in 2005?

It’s always a privilege to be a part of something as exciting and historic as The Open Championship. As the first Open venue to develop a commemorative logo it had to be something very special, worthy of the history and golf’s most famous Major.

After months of hard work, our design team came up with various options. From a large choice of colours and shapes, one particular design really caught our attention…

Our chosen 2015 Host Venue Logo features the iconic Swilcan Bridge, with the silhouette of the St Andrews skyline in the background. The original logo is red, white and blue but will become available in a host of colours to tie in with collections.

Once the final design was agreed we had to ensure that the logo could be translated into a wide range of golf accessories, as well as being easily embroidered onto our clothing collections.

We are currently working on the accessories sampling, however, we started the embroidery testing process early and visited our own label manufacturer, Marbas in Italy, to test the process.

We were privileged enough to be at the Italian factory when the embroidery was tested and it was spectacular seeing the logo being brought to life. To give you an idea of the intricacy involved in embroidering the Open logo, our normal logo contains approximately 4,000 stitches, whereas the Open one has 12,000!

A small collection of Host Venue 2015 Open Championship clothing is exclusively available in the Old Course Shop and is selling extremely well. We can’t wait to showcase our 2014 collections featuring the 2015 logo when the countdown to the 2015 Open begins.

 

Words by Biba McCormack-Young, St Andrews Links Golf Shops