Rusacks St Andrews

Rusacks St Andrews

Facing Pilmour Links and standing at the corner where the 18th green of the Old Course meets the town, Rusacks opened in 1887 as the Marine Hotel, built by Johann Kristof Wilhelm Rusack, a German-born farmer of French Huguenot descent who had settled at Bogward Farm outside town and gone on to invest in the hotel trade as golf tourism took hold. Designed by David Henry of the Hall & Henry partnership in the Free Northern European Renaissance style, the B-listed building was extended in 1893 and again in 1911, requisitioned for army conferences during the First World War and used as a barracks in the Second, before passing through the St Andrews Links Trust, Forte Heritage and Macdonald Hotels, who ran it as the Macdonald Rusacks Hotel from 2001. In 2019 it was bought by AJ Capital Partners, the Chicago firm founded by Ben Weprin, who financed a renovation and a westward extension over the old car park, designed by WCP Architects and completed in 2021, bringing the hotel to 120 rooms and suites. The renovation kept the original stone and brick and layered in tartan floors, floral wallpaper, dark velvets and Kohler brassware, with guest rooms named after past champions of the Old Course and hung with golf portraits and oil paintings that lean into the building's history without tipping into pastiche. Food and drink runs across three rooms overseen by chef Derek Johnstone: the Bridge for seasonal Scottish beef, seafood and game with views over the course, One Under for an all-day, Mediterranean-leaning menu, and 18, the glass-walled rooftop restaurant added in the extension, which looks straight down the 1st and 18th fairways to the sea. There is a full-size snooker table, a small gym with Peloton bikes, complimentary bikes for the town, and a welcome pack that runs to Tunnock's wafers and a bottle of Eden Mill gin. This is a hotel built around one view, and it does not pretend otherwise: ask for a room or a rooftop table facing the course and the game plays out below you, caddies and golfers crossing the same turf Old Tom Morris once did. The mood is more country house than boutique minimalism, heavy on tartan and dark wood rather than restraint, and the clientele skews toward golf pilgrims and their families rather than couples seeking anonymity. Staff know the Open Championship rota and the tee times of the day by heart, and the rooftop bar fills early with people who have just come off the course and want to talk about it. You should not come if you want quiet or contemporary design over history and golf iconography, since Rusacks leans hard into both and the lobby and bars can get loud with match talk, especially during the Open or in high season when weddings and golf societies book out whole floors. You should come for the view itself, for a room over the 18th green with a dram in hand as the light goes, and for a hotel that has been part of the town's golfing life since 1887 and still feels like it. The short version: A 120-room Victorian hotel on the 18th green of the Old Course, built in 1887 by Johann Kristof Wilhelm Rusack, restored by AJ Capital Partners in 2021, with three restaurants and rooms named for golf's champions.