As you make your way into Kingsbarns, you might notice a very understated sign which reads:
The Allan Robertson House.
There’s no such house but there is a huge, modern building at the end of the Kingsbarns practice range.
It is the test facility for the R&A, the golf governing body for Europe.
The center has an indoor test range to evaluate golf balls. On the range side of the building there are biomechanics testing bays, equipped with golf ball tracking radars and a marker tracking system capable of producing three-dimensional videos of golfers’ swings. Two golf robots, are housed within and used for both research and the testing of clubs and balls.
There are specially designed areas for the testing of clubs and other equipment. The testing equipment ranges from a container full of water, which uses the Archimedes principle to measure clubhead volume, through to an optical metrology system for iron clubs capable of measuring to sub-micron precision.
But the question lingers:
Who is or who was Allan Robertson?
He is the man credited with being Scotland’s first professional golfer, circa 1858.
Robertson is the man who taught Tom Morris Sr. how to play the game.
So now you know.
