A Life's Two Nines
By Alastair James Niel Loudon
Niel Loudon’s ‘Round’ … played with his son
A personal perspective on the Club’s early modern strategic evolution, 1960–1980.
I grew up in the world of the the R&A at a time when its role in the game was changing—though I did not fully understand that at the time.
As a teenager in St Andrews, I saw the game from an unusual vantage point: accompanying my father, Niel Loudon, as he worked within the R&A Secretariat, with the USGA executive and helping to organise championships. What seemed ordinary then was, in fact, a period in which the modern structure of the R&A and its role in international golf administration was taking shape.
This book tells the story of that change. It draws on personal experience, family archives, and a long familiarity with the people and structures that shaped the responsibilities and practices that we, as Members, take for granted today.
It is an independent work and is not an official publication of the R&A.
This is a golfing story, but it is not only about golf.
A round of golf is about how a game unfolds: early promise, inevitable setbacks, the rhythm of recovery and, if well played, a strong finish. This book is shaped by that understanding. It follows the metaphor of life as a round of eighteen holes, divided into a ‘Front Nine’ and a ‘Back Nine’. The ‘Front Nine’ is where the whole round's foundations are laid.
Centre stage is the life of my late father, William Niel Brown Loudon OBE, who served the R&A between 1963 and 1982. His life spanned continents, conflicts and periods of profound change within the world, and the game.
The ‘Front Nine’ explores the formative experiences that shaped his character and tested both faith and resolve — demanding what David Forgan, in The Golfer’s Creed of 1899, described as courage, skill, strategy and self-control’. For Niel, golf was never merely a game. It was a revealer of character. Courtesy, kindliness and generosity to an opponent were not abstractions to him, but principles to be lived.
Following the R&A’s strategic review of 1960 — which sought both to modernise The Open Championship and expand the R&A’s international role — Niel responded to an advertisement in The Times and was appointed Assistant Secretary of the R&A in 1963.
The ‘Back Nine’ traces his contribution during the Club’s early modern strategic evolution between 1960 and 1980: not through the export of authority, but through the building of influence by collaboration, relationships and trust.
The global game of golf did not evolve by accident. It was shaped by a small number of individuals working within institutions that adapted it to a changing world. I refer to them as the 'titans' of golf.
A Life’s Two Nines offers an account of that process from inside the room ... previously unseen.
As gratitude for the life’s experiences that the R&A gave my father, the net proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to The R&A Foundation in support of the Foundation’s work to preserve the game’s heritage, expand its reach and inspire future generations.
For early registrations of interest it is planned to deliver the first print run of books during the R&A Autumn Meeting, 2026.