North East Fife farmer Peter Forster has been nominated to serve as captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews for 2021/22.
The 70-year-old farmed at Peacehill near Wormit until his retirement and continues to be a director of two firms attached to the 2500-acre farm business. He has been a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club since 1972.
As with tradition, Mr Forster was nominated by Past Captains of the club. He will begin his year in office with the traditional driving-in ceremony on the first tee of the Old Course on Friday, September 24.
Born in Edinburgh, Mr Forster was educated at Rannoch School in Perthshire and studied at the Agricultural College in Aberdeen. He entered the family tenanted farm at Peacehill in 1972 and purchased the business in 1990, expanding the property through acquisitions to 1800 acres owned and 700 acres rented.
Mr Forster has served in a number of posts connected with the R&A including chairmanship of the club committee from 2001 to 2003.
He was a trustee of the St Andrews Links Trust from 2004 to 2013 and was chairman in the latter four of those years.
In 2020, he was elected chairman of the Inter-Club Liaison Committee of St Andrews.
Presently an 18-handicapper, Mr Forster is also a member of Scotscraig Golf Club, Tayport, the Ten Golf Club of St Andrews and Seniors Golf Society.
He is presently Chief Locust of the Locust Golf Society, founded in 1964 by four members of the Royal and Ancient.
Mr Forster is also a rugby enthusiast, having played for Panmure RFC in Dundee. He served as President of the Broughty Ferry club from 1999 to 2001.
He is a member of North East Fife Rotary Club and was made a Paul Harris Fellow in Rotary International in 2013.
He and his wife Mary have a daughter and a son, and six grandchildren.
The outgoing captain of the Royal and Ancient, Clive Edginton, was only the second captain in nearly 260 years of the club’s history to serve a second successive term. He agreed to serve a second year due to the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
