Carnoustie Ties the Friendship Cup as St Andrews Fall

Carnoustie tied Utah’s Red Rocks 32-32 in the 2026 Friendship Cup, while St Andrews lost 46.5-17.5 at Sand Hollow. The Utah legs finished on 15 September, three months after the Scottish half opened in May.

A year earlier the combined Carnoustie and St Andrews side had held on 33-30.5 after a 12-point June lead. The last host still leans on home dirt, and the visitors still leave with the week they came for.

Carnoustie Ties and St Andrews Get Run Over

The 2026 cup was scored as two series, not one combined board. Carnoustie, skippered by retired banker Alistair Batchen, halved with the Red Rocks. Team Roadrunners then ran over St Andrews 46.5-17.5 in the other international set, which also closed on the Tuesday at Sand Hollow Resort in Hurricane, near St. George.

THE 2025 AND 2026 SCORELINES

Both 2026 series add up to 64 points. The 2025 board was a single 63.5-point pile, which is why a 12-point Scottish lead could shrink to 2.5 without anyone changing how the week is sold.

Friendship Cup secretary Rhett Long, a former Ogden publisher and Southern Utah University golfer who runs the logistics, called the whole circuit the joy of his life. That line sits beside a 29-point beating of St Andrews, which is the split this cup now has to live with.

Scotland’s 12-Point Cushion Almost Ran Out

On 16 September 2025 the Americans made up a lot of ground over two days at Sand Hollow, and the thing still came down to the last three matches. Carnoustie and St Andrews held. The June lead had been 12 points. The final gap was 2.5, so Utah had clawed back 9.5 on its own course.

American captain Jimmy DeGrafenreid, then in his third year with the cup, did not dress the loss up as an accident of format.

This year the Scottish guys put together two of the best teams ever, solid golfers on both sides, but also fantastic guys. I’ve been involved with this for three years and I believe this year was the best by far. Even though we came out on the losing end, I feel like the quality of guys that were here, the quality of golf that was played was superb.

Jimmy DeGrafenreid, USA captain, Sand Hollow 2025

Mark Kubicki, a builder from Arbroath and a Carnoustie Golf Club member, had filled in the year before for a Scot who pulled out for cancer treatment. He and Nikki Christie, another Carnoustie man, barely knew each other at home and now play at least twice a week. Christie still lights up at Jay Don Blake, the St. George native who tied for third in the 2010 Senior Open at Carnoustie, behind Bernhard Langer. Blake’s local caddie, Ivan Watson, paid off student loans with that week’s pay and started a working life on it, Christie said.

“The relationships are the most important. It has been an outstanding experience,” Kubicki said. Christie put it the same way, then added the scenery Utahns stop noticing: vast country the Scots never see at home, and greens so fast he “couldn’t get enough of it.”

Rod Sturrock and the Leavitts Built a Seven-Year Cup

Long said the 2026 event was in its seventh year. The idea came from co-founder Dave Wilkey, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, and his brother Mark Leavitt of Leavitt Insurance in Cedar City, working with Rod Sturrock, the retired starter on the Old Course at St Andrews, who chairs the Scottish side.

It is a modified Ryder Cup for club golfers, played home and away, with extra rounds packed around the scored matches. Utah, Nevada and California players go to Scotland. The Scots come back to southern Utah Golf Week. The public golf conversation barely notices it, which fits a private amateur circuit run by an insurance family and an Old Course starter rather than a tour board.

FROM A ONE-DAY SHOW TO YEAR SEVEN

1. September 2019: The first Friendship Cup is played at Sand Hollow Resort.
2. 2020: The planned first Scotland return is delayed by Covid-19.
3. June 2022: Utah golfers make the first trip to St Andrews and Carnoustie.
4. May 2026: The 2026 matches open in Scotland.
5. 15 September 2026: The Utah legs finish at Sand Hollow.

Mark Leavitt and Long have been the American backbone. Sturrock has been the Scottish one, a man whose working life was sending people off the first tee at the Home of Golf and who now shepherds club players onto a desert course that looks like another planet from the Angus coast.

The Cheques Went to Dementia Care and the Air Ambulance

The Scottish return is not the trophy. In November 2024, Friendship Cup Scotland handed Carnoustie Memories more than £3,500 for the year, including £1,300 from two golf days at Panmure. Founder Lorraine Young called that money a gamechanger because the group could finally run the days out it had only talked about, including trips to the World Golf Museum in St Andrews.

The group supports local golfers living with dementia who can no longer walk the links as they did. It meets at Links House, the golf centre at Carnoustie, and it has grown a football arm and a singing group. Sturrock said it uses golf, memorabilia and other sports to rekindle memory and make new ones for members and families. The R&A has already described the same Golf Memories group at Links House as part of a wider reminiscence project around the Open venues.

In June 2026, with Batchen skippering Team Carnoustie and serving as Blairgowrie captain, the cup made SCAA its Scottish charity of the year.

WHERE THE SCOTTISH MONEY WENT

• Carnoustie Memories, 2024: More than £3,500, including £1,300 from two Panmure golf days, described by Young as a gamechanger for members living with dementia.
• SCAA, June 2026: A £1,000 donation from Friendship Cup Scotland, Batchen’s choice as Blairgowrie captain and Carnoustie skipper.
• Utah charity day, 17 September 2025: Thirty Scottish players were split among BYU, Utah Jazz, Las Vegas Raiders and a Legends side led by Mike Leavitt and former Gov. Gary Herbert.

Sturrock said the partners were glad to back Scotland’s only charity air ambulance, and that it gave them “great pleasure to donate £1,000 to such a worthy cause.” Young’s point was smaller and sharper: previously the group had talked about days out, and the cheques meant they could actually run them.

What the Scots Did Between the Matches

The scored sessions are only the middle of the visit. In 2025 half the travelling party played Hobble Creek in Springville and the other half Gladstan in Payson on the Friday, then took in a Southern Utah University football game in Cedar City and The Wizard of Oz at Tuacahn in Ivins.

Kubicki, who “knows his angles” as a builder, looked up the canyon walls at Hobble Creek and thought of home, except the mountains were larger. At about 5,000 feet he hit a 5-wood 205 yards on the 3rd, to 5 feet. In Scotland that club goes no more than 185, he said. Christie found the same course lush, with greens nothing like the ones he putts at Carnoustie.

THE WEEK AROUND THE MATCHES

• Friday golf, 2025: Hobble Creek in Springville and Gladstan in Payson, before the Sand Hollow finals.
• Shows and football, 2025: An SUU game in Cedar City and The Wizard of Oz at Tuacahn.
• Parks and ranch, 2026: Bryce Canyon and the Leavitt ranch outside Loa, with a few Scots invited to sing with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
• Monday night, 2026: Almost the whole party at Les Misérables at Tuacahn, then a short stop in Las Vegas on the way home.

Peter Wood, an Englishman born in York and now living in Montrose, sat in a cart at Gladstan before his Sand Hollow games and tried to find a British course that looked like this. He could not.

Sand Hollow Looks Nothing Like Montrose

Going from Carnoustie and the North Sea wind to Hurricane is, for some of these golfers, like landing on the moon. Wood had never seen anything like the Championship Course on a red-rock ridgeline. When a breeze got up during his round, it felt like home, except it was not wind as he knows it.

Absolutely not. Nothing like you’d play anywhere in the U.K., not in Scotland or England. Not at all.

Peter Wood, Carnoustie Friendship Cup team, on Sand Hollow

Alan Brown, a retired Glasgow detective inspector on the St Andrews side, said he had loved the desert, the rock and a course he had never played anything like. Batchen, asked what he would tell Americans who want Carnoustie, did not sell the postcard.

Um, get some therapy after playing the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th. The first nine will lull you into a false sense of security. They’ll come back and bite you. It’s a fantastic golf course, a fantastic finish, a joy to play.

Alistair Batchen, Carnoustie Friendship Cup captain

That is the seven-year pattern in two directions. Scotland can pile up points in June or May on courses that bite. Utah can take them back on a ridgeline with no cousin in Montrose. In 2025 the visitors held by 2.5. In 2026 Carnoustie got out with a half and St Andrews did not. The Scots still flew home via Las Vegas with the week in the book, and with Batchen’s warning about Carnoustie’s last four holes waiting for the next American party that thinks the front nine was the test.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which Scottish Clubs Send Players to the Friendship Cup?

Players have come from St Andrews, Crail, Scotscraig, Ladybank, Carnoustie, Blairgowrie and Montrose, with the American majority based in Utah and others drawn from across the United States. The Scottish side is organised as Carnoustie and St Andrews teams against Utah’s Red Rocks and Roadrunners.

What Is Carnoustie Memories?

Carnoustie Memories launched in 2015 as Golf Memories Carnoustie, a volunteer group for local golfers living with dementia who can no longer walk the links as before, and it later added football and a Singing with Friends circle. It received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, and staff at Carnoustie Golf Links have sat Dementia Friends sessions as part of a push to make the town dementia-friendly.

How Is Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance Funded?

SCAA is funded entirely by donations, with £0 in statutory government funding, and its own count lists 7,803 missions since it launched in 2013. It flies from Perth and Aberdeen, works with the Scottish Ambulance Service, and covers about 30,000 square miles.

How Long Is the Sand Hollow Championship Course?

The Championship Course is a par-72 layout of 7,315 yards, designed by John Fought, with a front nine among red-rock outcrops and a back nine along a ridgeline and cliffs. The resort lists three holes among America’s 100, at 12, 13 and 15, which is why so many visiting Scots reach for a camera before a club on that stretch.