With One Battle Over in Scotland, Another Begins

By JOHN F. BURNSSEPT. 21, 2014

The New York Times

AUCHTERARDER, Scotland — With one struggle concluded and another set to begin, this ancient slate-gray town in the russet-leaved approaches to the Scottish Highlands has been busy in recent days, swapping the political passions of last week for the breezier enthusiasms involved in preparing for what many local residents regard as the greatest sporting event ever to be staged in Scotland.

With days to go before the first round of the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, a golf resort three miles from Auchterarder, townspeople have chosen to move beyond the divisive feelings stirred by Thursday’s vote on whether Scotland should break its bond with Britain and retake the independence it lost in the Acts of Union of 1707.

Fifty miles southwest, in Glasgow — one of only three districts in the 32 across Scotland that voted to secede — festering resentments erupted in scattered violence on Friday. In Auchterarder, though, there has been “nae bother” in the wake of the vote, as some here expressed it. Perth and Kinross, the central belt region that includes Auchterarder, was one of the districts that voted most strongly to reject independence, 60.2 percent to 39.8; the margin across Scotland was 10.6 percentage points.

In the aftermath of the referendum, what many here refer to as “the cleanup” has progressed from taking down political emblems to grooming sidewalks and touching up the paint of local hotels, which sold out all their rooms months ago, as did almost all the hotels within 50 miles of Gleneagles; 135,000 Ryder Cup ticket holders are expected to arrive for the three days of the tournament, which begins Friday.

Among business people in Auchterarder, two words have been repeated at almost every turn since the referendum result came in: “It’s over,” people said, referring both to the vote and to its bitter divisions, as a visitor conducted an impromptu poll at grocery stores, bakeries, real estate offices and main street eateries, like Cocoa Mountain.

That cafe is run by Carol Wood, who is also the chairwoman of a committee negotiating with Ryder Cup officials over issues affecting the town. These include creating a sealed ring around Gleneagles for all but Cup-sanctioned vehicles, including the buses that will ferry in ticket holders from up to an hour away, and controlling through traffic on a nearby highway, which will be allowed into the town only on a restricted basis.

Wood, who led a bitter fight on behalf of local companies against an earlier plan that appeared likely to stifle business in the town for two weeks or more, is more relaxed now.

“We were very disillusioned,” she said, describing a feeling that local businesses would be the losers in an event that is expected to generate up to $250 million in revenue for the European Ryder Cup organization and for other businesses directly linked to the tournament in Gleneagles. One story being passed around was that the owner of a local estate had struck a deal with visiting Americans for about $170,000 to rent his mansion and its helicopter landing pad for the week.

Wood said she was now satisfied that enough customers would be allowed to filter into Auchterarder to keep local store owners happy. But concerns have not abated among the townspeople. As Constable Euan Mitchell, assigned by Police Scotland as a community liaison officer for the months leading up to the Cup, handed out leaflets over the weekend declaring Auchterarder to be “open for business” during the competition, he was pressed by agitated residents who worried that they would not be able to walk their dogs, send their mail or go to church.

“You’ll be fine, ma’am; you can stop for as long as it takes to post your letter,” he told one elderly woman who said she worried about getting a parking fine for stopping at a mailbox on a street where parking had been banned for the Cup.

Other concerns have been raised at Auchterarder Golf Club, which has been forced to suspend play on its sixth hole for the duration of the Cup after officials ruled that “wildly errant shots” by club members could cross a boundary fence and strike players and spectators on the 15th hole of the Jack Nicklaus-designed Centenary Course at Gleneagles that will be used for the Cup.

Last-minute preparations have been underway across Gleneagles. Every road and pathway has been busy with golf carts, mobile cranes and trucks. Fairways are being groomed and regroomed, with some of the tractor-drawn mowers flying two flags — one the United States’ stars and stripes, the other the blue flag of Ryder Cup Europe.

The marquees, too, have a nonpartisan air, with one inscription, 30 feet high, quoting Tom Watson, the 65-year-old captain of the American team, on his delight at serving as a Ryder Cup captain for a second time, after his victory as captain in 1993. Watson’s five victories in the British Open — four of them on Scottish courses, although none at Gleneagles — have made him a hugely popular figure among visitors, both European and American, as he tries to end a run in which the United States has been defeated in five of the last six Ryder Cups.

Although local bookmakers have made Europe the favorite, the sense among many visiting the course in recent days has been that an American victory to redeem the team’s loss at the last Cup, in 2012 — when Europe won an astonishing eight of the 12 last-day singles matches at Medinah, outside Chicago, to retain the trophy by a single point, 14 ½ to 13 ½ — would be almost as much of a crowd-pleaser. Lapel buttons with Watson’s image have been even more popular than booster buttons for Rory McIlroy, a 25-year-old from Northern Ireland who will lead the European players.

Since the referendum, nobody associated with the Cup management has been prepared to say that there will be no instances of political celebration or embitterment among the Scots and the English likely to predominate among the spectators — no boisterously waved Union Jacks or Saltires, no placards smuggled past the elaborate security net and no shouted slogans as the 24 European and American players stand over their strokes.

A precedent of a kind was set at Wimbledon last year, when Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, unfurled a Saltire hidden in his wife’s handbag. He waved the flag behind the back of the British prime minister, David Cameron, as Andy Murray, a Scot who grew up in Dunblane, 15 miles southwest of Gleneagles, became the first Briton to win the men’s singles title in 75 years.

Murray set off something of a political firestorm on Thursday when he seemed to end his equivocation about the referendum with a last-minute Twitter post that concluded with “lets do this!” The message prompted angry retorts online from tennis fans who vowed to boo and otherwise upset Murray in future Wimbledon appearances, but the four English and Scottish golfers competing at Gleneagles have — perhaps wisely — mostly kept their own counsel on the independence issue.

Perhaps the most notable declaration before the vote came from Colin Montgomerie, a Scot who is among the most successful contestants in the Ryder Cup’s history and who resides for part of the year at a home he owns near Auchterarder. An eight-time Cup competitor, as well as Europe’s nonplaying captain for its win in Wales in 2010, Montgomerie, now a regular on the senior tour, has a status, financially and professionally, that may have made it easier for him to speak out against independence.

But for all that, Montgomerie, who is not part of the European team this year, took care to make his argument on strictly dispassionate grounds: the potential dent independence might make in his fortune.

“Going independent would cost everyone a lot of money in Scotland,” he said in an interview published in the magazine Global Golf Post this summer. “Who’ll pay for it? The taxpayer — and that’s me, and I don’t want it.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 22, 2014, on page D7 of the New York edition with the headline: With One Battle Over in Scotland, Another Begins. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe