Troon nurtures sporting nobility

The approach to Troon, gazing out to the lump of volcanic beauty that is the Ailsa Rock, is enough to inspire anyone’s wildest tourist instincts, the town wrapping itself around a scenic slice of the Scottish south west coast.

The Royal Troon Golf Club will be the focus for a world-wide television audience, and thousands will make the pilgrimage to Troon, many unaware of the town’s sporting heritage beyond a renowned golf-course, and Colin Montgomerie, whose father was a secretary at Royal Troon. The list of sporting sons and daughters is impressive, including not simply golfers such as Monty brought up surrounded by some of the finest courses in the world. Rugby players have flourished, nurtured by the excellent Marr College, whose FP club still runs three teams, and where some of the finest rugby players from these shores learned their trade. Two exalted pupils are Peter and Gordon Brown, the brothers who represented Scotland 57 times between them. Gordon, who passed away three years ago with cancer, also played for the British Lions and is known throughout the world by his hometown, with the sobriquet "Broon frae Troon" a rather neat illustration of how sporting talent can often be directly associated with the place one is from.

There are other indications too of the way in which Troon has become such an integral part of Scotland’s sporting fabric. The Scotland football team will regularly make their base at Troon before big international matches. They stay in the majestically located Marine Hotel which stands between golf course and beach on the sea front, enough to encourage even the most dull-headed footballer into thinking thoughts of greatness, if not always deeds. At least that is what former Scotland manager Craig Brown hoped, when taking his squad to the picturesque area in which he grew up. Real Madrid stayed in the town before travelling up to Glasgow for an epochal European Cup final against Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden Park in 1960, the likes of Di Stefano, Puskas and Gento getting a hit off the west coast air before putting on one of the most exquisite displays of football ever seen.

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Pele, too, has trodden the streets of Troon, with Brazil having used the town as a base in 1966, before playing Scotland in a friendly match prior to moving down to England for the World Cup finals. The picture of him strolling out of a ramshackle Troon Juniors FC hut is one to treasure, rivalling, in terms of significance, Elvis Presley’s stroll out on to the tarmac at nearby Prestwick airport six years earlier, his only steps on British soil. The match at Hampden, which ended 1-1, was Pele’s only appearance in Scotland, and it seemed fitting that the Brazilians, the kings of world football, should have made their base in a place which has nourished sporting excellence down through the years, not just in the many golf clubs which skirt the town, but also in the housing schemes which require a revision of opinion for those who think that Troon is simply a Mecca for retired and moneyed fuddy-duddies.

It was in a Troon housing scheme where one of the most sportingly prodigious families Scotland has known could be found in the middle of the last century. The aforementioned Gordon Brown would never deny the grounding he got in Troon, nor would he neglect to mention the sporting genes which ran through his family. Both his father, Jock, and mother were born and brought up in Troon. Jock was a goalkeeper, playing for Clyde, Hibs, Dundee and Kilmarnock and winning a Scottish Cup winner’s medal with the first named club in 1938-39, and one Scottish cap against Wales. A scratch golfer, he even took part in a Scottish Open golf championship at Troon, beaten by a young-star-in-the-making by the name of Arnold Palmer.

Jock’s brother Tom was also a goalkeeper, at Ipswich Town, while another brother, Jim, left for the States and ended up signing professional terms with New York Giants and was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 1986, the year another son of Troon - the former Liverpool player Steve Nicol - was picked in the Scotland squad for the World Cup finals in Mexico. Like Jim, he ended up in America, where he now manages New England Revolution.

"Mum was a great hockey player, too, so there’s a fair bit of pedigree there," Gordononce said of this remarkable heritage. Another brother, John, was reckoned to be the best rugby player of all three, although he did not take up the game until the age of 28. Peter was no slouch either on the rugby field, even if he grew up dreaming of scoring the winning goal at Wembley against England. "It turned out the other way - I ended up kicking the winning goal for Scotland at Twickenham instead," says Peter now.

Asked about the reason for such a wealth of sporting achievement by fellow Troonites, Peter continued: "It was just a wonderful place to grow up in. You had the beach, and all the golf courses. I played football before I played rugby, but the whole emphasis was on sport. My brother John was also an outstanding sportsman, but never played a lot of rugby. We all played football every night - 22 aside - in the housing scheme where we were brought up. It was very competitive, against the men from the local shipyard in their tackety boots, and no referee, which meant no penalties or free-kicks. You had to learn to live. [Former Scotland coach] Craig Brown told me once that that is what is missing nowadays. He said that nowadays the nursery society would not even allow boys to play with men in tackety boots. But that taught you to exist, to give as good as you get."

It was a philosophy which extended a few miles down the coast to Ayr, to where other sporting stars as Ian ‘Mighty Mouse" McLauchlan and the celebrated footballer Ian Ure began their ascents in the world of rugby and football respectively. McLauchlan was brought up in Maybole, a few miles south of Ayr, but played in the same school team as Ure. At rugby. "Ian could have been a stand-off for Scotland, but chose football," remembers McLauchlan of a pal who went on to play for Dundee, Arsenal and Manchester United. McLauchlan also played in a Scotland pack of whom six out of eight were from Ayrshire, the others being Quinton Dunlop, Alastair McHarg, Gordon Strachan and the brothers Brown. Asked if there was something in the water in the area, he said: "It was just that if you didn’t take sport you were considered an outcast, and the teachers at schools like Marr College and Ayr Academy encouraged you to take it seriously." There is another claim to fame boasted by the area, and that is nurturing Scotland’s only ever England cricket captain Mike Denness, a class-mate at school of McLauchlan and Ure.

Troon is perhaps the most cherished of Scottish sporting venues since its legacy boasts a broader, more inclusive, narrative than places such as St Andrews, known throughout the world as the home of golf but little else when it comes to sport. Troon even has a successful basketball team - the Troon Tornadoes, who won the men’s senior Scottish Cup in 2003 - to add to the petanque club and an athletic club, the Troon Tortoises. More importantly, though, it also knows how to look after its sporting heroes, awarding complimentary use of the municipal golf courses around Troon to Gordon and Peter Brown. And when Gordon so sadly died, it was decided a memorial garden - with a bronze replica rugby ball sitting atop a cairn - should be built to honour him. That was opened last month, at a ceremony attended by Gordon’s son Rory, and his two nephews Morgan and Zak. Just another generation of sporting stars who owe something to a special little town called Troon.