World Golf Tour Offers the Home of Golf, St Andrews Links for Play Online

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--World Golf Tour, the world’s most authentic online golf experience, today announces a partnership with St Andrews Links, which will allow everyone to experience virtually The Old Course for free, through an Internet connection.

“The graphics used by WGT are of the highest quality.”

“The Old Course at St Andrews Links is on the top of every golfer’s course wish list to play,” said YuChiang Cheng, CEO of World Golf Tour. “In continuing our mission to provide the most challenging, world-class courses to our members, we knew the Home of Golf had to be offered. The course reminds everyone where this great game originated, on a true links course. We are humbled and honored to introduce it as our first international course.”

The virtual Old Course’s debut in July comes just ahead of it hosting The 2010 Open Championship. The world famous Old Course has hosted The Open more than any other course and boasts huge double greens, the notorious Road Hole and the famous “Valley of Sin” on the 18^th. The 6721-yard course includes 112 bunkers amongst the rolling hills in Scotland.

Golf has been played on the Old Course for over six centuries, 100 years before Columbus reached America and more than 200 years before Shakespeare was hard at work in England.

“For golfers around the world it is a lifelong ambition to play The Old Course, and now through our partnership with World Golf Tour, they have the opportunity to experience some of the most famous golf holes online,” said Danny Campbell, Director of Retail and Licensing at St Andrews Links. “The graphics used by WGT are of the highest quality.”

Over the past two years, WGT has taken high-definition quality images of The Old Course at St Andrews Links. These HD images, along with laser and GPS scans, have been sewn together using proprietary technology to virtually replicate the Home of Golf. WGT’s technology enables every pixel of a photograph to have a GPS location and physical properties to identify it as sand, grass or water.

The July addition of The Old Course at St Andrews Links expands upon World Golf Tour’s new course offerings this year. In May, World Golf Tour launched a virtual Bethpage Black, and alongside the USGA, hosted the inaugural Virtual U.S. Open. In addition, the full Ocean Course at Kiawah Island has been revealed as was Wolf Creek Golf Resort.