For decades, the residents of St Andrews have enjoyed a privilege appropriate to the Home of Golf: they can play on any one of the town’s seven courses, including the famous Old Course, for a fraction of the usual cost.

So, when Alistair Stewart, a keen golfer and retired lawyer, bought a converted farm steading with a St Andrews address, he thought he would be entitled to the discount. He was, however, disappointed.

St Andrews Links Trust, which runs the courses, has refused to give Mr Stewart a resident’s ticket. Mr Stewart believes the trust has wrongly interpreted the law that grants St Andrews residents the passes and intends to take the trust to court to prove his entitlement.

The battle centres around Article 12 (3) (a) of the St Andrews Links Order Confirmation Act 1974, which states that the passes are for “residents of the town of St Andrews entitled for the time being to vote at elections for the local authority and their children so residing”.

Mr Stewart, 63, said that this meant that residents were defined simply as those able to vote. He thinks that the legislators drew up the basic test so that trustees would not have the tricky task of coming to their own definition, which, he said, they were not entitled to do.

The trust’s lawyers, however, said that the act set up a two-fold test for the pass: holders must be a resident and, secondly, must be able to vote. They define “resident” as someone living within the town as defined by the local plan.

Mr Stewart said: “There is no ‘and’ in the provision. And there is no indication that the trust has the power to draw this kind of boundary and I think legislators would have given them that power if that was what they wanted. We are entitled to vote here.”

Mr Stewart and his wife, Moira, bought the property last year. It is about two minutes’ drive and half an hour’s walk from the town centre and the couple are registered to vote in the local elections.

For the moment, Mr Stewart’s dreams of a retirement spent on some of the world’s greatest golf courses remain unrealised. If he were to buy an ordinary open links pass, which are available to anyone, he would have to pay £785 a year. A resident’s ticket costs £170 a year.

Mr Stewart, who used to work at the European Commission in Brussels in international trade law, wants to take the case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh but admitted: “My fear would be I can’t be 100 per cent sure of winning. If I lost, I could be liable for their fees, which would be something of a risk, and they know that.

“I’m going to attempt to get more expert advice than I can put together to see what the percentage chances are.”

His neighbours are behind him, he says, having previously written to the “rather authoritarian” trust to get their own tickets and “got short shrift”. Mr Stewart hopes he will be more successful with his legal argument.

He is also considering asking locals in a similar position to him to come together to form a fighting fund which would be used if he went to court and lost.

A spokesman for St Andrews Links Trust said: “This is a long established policy which is based on an opinion provided by senior legal counsel. Trustees recently carefully reconsidered the policy in light of the argument promoted by Mr Stewart. Having done so, they determined that the current policy remains appropriate.”

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