How an American family built the home of the Genesis Scottish Open

Jerry Sarvadi always wanted to host a professional golf tournament like his younger brother. But his own golf course? That sounded crazy to him. He ended up achieving both as The Renaissance Club, the course he founded in North Berwick, Scotland, will host the Genesis Scottish Open, a co-sanctioned event between the DP World Tour and PGA Tour, for the sixth time this week.

How an American family ended up building a golf course in the country known as the Home of Golf is part of an immigrant success story that begins with Sarvadi, one of nine children whose parents emigrated from Romania, discovering golf at a young age as a caddie. Sarvadi, 75, started lugging a bag at Aurora Country Club near Cleveland to help the family make ends meet at age 9 and taught himself to play the game.

At the time, there were more scholarships in track and field than golf so he focused his attention on running and earned a scholarship to the University of Kentucky. But after his running days ended, golf filled the competitive void. Soon his father created a golf tournament, the Sarvadi Invitational, in 1997, to gather the family together and it grew over the years to a larger gathering held at Pinehurst Resort.

In 2002, an associate brought his son-in-law, who happened to work for Jack Nicklaus’s design company, and over glasses of wine wondered if they’d want to build a golf course in Scotland?

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“And we said, ‘You idiot, that’s crazy. There’s a golf course on every corner there,’ ” Sarvadi recalled. “And he said, ‘Yeah, but this property is right next to Muirfield.’ And I said, ‘What does that mean?’ He pulled out a map from his back pocket and set it on the table and pointed out where a stone wall separated the property. We all said, ‘Let’s build a golf course in Scotland.’ It was stupid. Then we woke up the next day and forgot all about it.”

But not for long because shortly thereafter, Sarvadi was invited to play Muirfield, the famed British Open site that deserves all of the accolades heaped upon it, on a picture-perfect day and fell in love with Scottish golf. So much so that he arranged to meet the trustees of the neighboring land depicted on the map while he was there. The Renaissance Club sits on 300 acres of rolling land by a stretch of the East Lothian coastline dotted with historic features and offering stunning views of landmarks like Arthur’s Seat, an…