Carnoustie’s first golfer is considered to be a local landowner named Sir Robert Maule.
For hundreds of years, Carnoustie’s golf courses were laid out on private land. By the year 1842, when the first Carnoustie Golf Club had been formed, the area was owned by the Earl of Dalhousie who had permitted golf to be played freely on the Links. As word spread that the British Government proposed to purchase large swathes of land in the area for a military training camp, the land on which the golf course sat was sold to the town in 1892. This led to a boom in golfing activity, golfing industries and golf clubs.
A condition of the sale was that the land should be maintained in all time as a golf course. The Links remain in public ownership to this day.