The present-day reality is very different from some of the non-insider perceptions hanging over from the club's antiquity and royal associations

Members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews are all at least 87 years old, wear deer-stalker hats, heavy tweed plus-fours and highly-polished brown brogues. They spend their mornings playing two-ball Scotch foursomes with swarms of black gun-dogs trailing in their wake, then sleep away their pink-gin or malt-whisky lunchtime excesses in deep leather armchairs under grandiose paintings of royal patrons in their closely-guarded, mansion-like clubhouse.

Once every four years, a uniformed servant rings a hand-bell and they come out of their stupor long enough for a quick chat about the Rules of Golf, make a few incomprehensible changes, then slip quietly back into reminiscing about the good old days of hickory shafts and feathery balls.

When the Open Championship breaks into their routine with a return to the Old Course every five years or so, they don double-breasted blue blazers, tighten their soup-stained club ties, clip on big red rosettes, and march arrogantly around the premises with their noses in the air, being condescending to "artisans" like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and bloody rude to everyone else.

The above seems to be the image many modern golfers carry in their minds about a venerable private club, founded in 1754, that has had responsibility for the governance of golf throughout the world, with the exception of the USA and Mexico, for more than 100 years.

Is it true that golf most everywhere on the planet is controlled by a brigade of bedandruffed Colonel Blimps - or is there an army of well-tailored, astute-minded businessmen hidden away in a basement? How did a private club gain such a position of preeminence? Why does it still wield such authority? What does it really contribute to the game?

The answers to these questions, and many more, lie in a tangled web of a story that starts at any time you care to choose between 1400 and 1754. The earliest date is an estimate of the time when golf was first played on the St Andrews shoreline. It was thought to be popular with the locals when the town's university was founded in 1413, and was certainly interfering with archery practice, a first line of national defense, when King James II banned the game by an act of the Scottish Parliament in 1457.

St. Andrews was, at this time, the religious capital of Scotland, a rich and vibrant city where golf, advanced learning, religion, and commerce all combined to bring wealthy visitors and pilgrims from around the world.

Then came a period of rapid decline. The Reformation destroyed the city's religious significance and the underfunded university was in danger of being moved to Perth. The magnificent cathedral lay in ruins. In an effort to revive the town's fortunes by attracting rich golfers for an annual contest, 22 great and good local worthies banded together, put up the funds to buy an inscribed silver club, and formed the Society of St. Andrews Golfers in 1754.

It is doubtful if their activities added much to the income of the town, but, 80 years later, they received the nod from King William IV and restyled themselves as the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. Exactly 100 years after the original members' first meeting, their successors built the impressive clubhouse (since expanded outwards and upwards) behind the first tee of the Old Course.

The R and A is certainly not the oldest golf club in the world. That honor goes to the Gentlemen Golfers of Leith, who played their first contest in 1744 and established the first written rules of the game. But the Gentlemen Golfers moved first from their five-hole course at Leith to nine holes at Musselburgh, then to the splendid present links at Muirfield, where they became and remain known as The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers.

Throughout this evolutionary period, the stature of the R and A in St. Andrews, along with the city's growing recognition as the home of golf, led newcomers to the game to look there for guidance, until, in 1897, by consensus of the leading clubs, responsibility for the promulgation of a uniform set of rules was thrust on the R and A. Until that time, each club had set its own laws and playing rules.

In 1920, the R and A was also made responsible for the running of the Open and Amateur Championships, although neither had been conceived in the town, the Open springing to life at Prestwick on the west coast of Scotland in 1860, and the Amateur at Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake in England in 1885. And so, by force of circumstance and happenstance, the rapidly-expanding private club became the de facto governor of the game.

And there - excepting America and Mexico, where the United States Golf Association rules - golf's government has remained. Today, more than 100 countries, associations and unions are affiliated to the R and A, faithfully following its lead and guidance on the rules, conditions of amateur status, and legality of clubs and balls.

And yet, no matter how well the R and A copes with the demands of the now world-wide modern game, the weight of almost 250 years of history hanging on its coattails sometimes creates the impression of a reactionary, don't-mess-with-history attitude.

The whole clubhouse is like a living museum. Clubs, trophies and paintings charting the history of golf adorn the walls of every room. The Big Room, overlooking the first tee of the Old Course, has been the centerpiece of activity since 1854. On a winter's day, with cold winds battering the tall windows and the glow from huge chandeliers and two open fires glinting on the portraits of distinguished members and great players, it is almost possible to hear the voices of the larger-than-life characters who helped create this unique body.

Characters like Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair, the man mainly responsible for raising the money and pushing through the plans for the construction of the clubhouse. The son of a church minister, Sir Hugh was born in 1786 and served for many years with the British army in India. On his return to St. Andrews, he took the town and the fledgling R and A and lit bonfires under them. His nephew, Lord Playfair summed him up: "He labored with the will and authority of an autocrat, and forced money by subscription with the audacity of a highwayman. Naturally, he constantly gave offense, but, as his reforms were always justified, his tyrannies were condoned." Obviously a great man to have on a fund-raising committee.

Sir Hugh was well supported by a less ogre-like captain of the club, John Whyte Melville, who became renowned for a macabre bet he struck with another knight of the realm, Sir David Moncrieff. Whomever lived longest of them would bear the cost of a silver putter to be donated to the R and A on the death of his friend. Whyte Melville won - or rather lost - by 50 years, continuing to play two rounds a day three days a week until he was 83.

Perhaps the most striking example of the mettle of those early golfers was displayed by naval captain Maitland Dougal, who was, not surprisingly, to rise to the rank of admiral. As he was about to tee off at the autumn gathering of R and A members in 1860, he saw men struggling to launch the town's lifeboat in gale-force winds. A ship was in distress in St. Andrews Bay, but the lifeboat was short of crew members. When so informed, the valiant captain leaped aboard and took the stroke oar, heading up a five-hour battle with horrendous seas before the rescue was complete. After returning to the clubhouse and a short break - we can safely assume for some slugs of rum and dry clothes - Dougal went out to play his round, scoring, for the times, a highly creditable 112. Better yet, it was good enough for victory.

Since 1837, every new captain of the R and A has driven himself into office each autumn to the sound of a cannon being fired. The first such weapon was bought from a Prussian for the equivalent of three dollars, but was replaced with a less dangerous model in 1892.

The quaintly old-fashioned title of "Secretary" is still used for the man who heads up the whole operation. He is housed in an office half the size of a tennis court, with a boardroom table seating 20 and a balcony that commands the town's finest view over the Old Course and St. Andrews Bay to the distant Grampian Mountains. Only in the past few months has this elegant room been cursed with the presence of a computer.

Although the club continues to proudly preserve and revere its rich patina of antiquity and tradition, of recent times the thoughts and energies of the men who have run it have been largely focused on the future.

The R and A's vast membership of 2,400 is scattered all around the world - fewer than 100 members live in St. Andrews - and many are leading administrators of their own country's golf authorities. With this wealth of both golf and business expertise available to all R and A committees, the great decisions affecting the game are not, as many outsiders seem to suspect, dreamed up and executed by doddering, gin-soaked local worthies, but by the combined input of some of the sharpest brains in any sport.

Although they work independently, the R and A and USGA consult constantly, to the point where, since 1952, they have maintained a common code of rules, so that, wherever the game is played, the same laws apply. Certainly the most important work of both bodies is reviewing and revising the rules of a seemingly very simple but in actuality an extremely complex game.

The R and A handles close to 4,000 queries on the rules each year. Some are downright silly, others scarcely believable, but a goodly number almost unbelievably complex. One of the most unusual judgments concerned a troubled African golfer who'd reached the top of his backswing when a snake slithered between his feet. With instinctive adjustment of his downswing, he whacked it hard on the head. The question was: should his snake-killing swing be counted as a golf stroke? The rules committee found in the man's favor, ruling that his intention to strike the ball ceased at the moment he spotted the reptile.

In addition to making judgments on rules matters, the R and A holds an annual referee school where delegates from up to 40 nations spend a crowded three days at lectures, discussions and practical demonstrations before sitting through a tough exam. The club's rules staff also takes a traveling seminar around the world.

All of this is behind the scenes, however, the most public showcase of the R and A's work being the Open Championship, of late a superbly well-run affair that will, this millennium year at St. Andrews, attract crowds of well over 200,000 spectators. Yet there is a tremendous spin-off from this third-to-be-played of the game's four annual majors that never catches the public eye.

Several years ago, a leading player, perhaps short of a million or two for a new jet, questioned what the R and A did with its profits from the Open, suggesting that any excess of income over expenditure should be included in the championship prize-money.

The reality is that every penny made from the old championship goes back into the game of golf at one level or another, as the result of two decisions made by the R and A back in the early 1980s when the Open first began to generate profits. They were that none of the money was to be used to support the club as a private members' institution, and that all proceeds were to be distributed as widely as possible for the benefit of golf. Since then, more than $60 million has flowed from R and A headquarters to golfing projects throughout the world in the form of outright grants and interest-free loans.

Presently, a major part of the funding goes to coaching and the promotion of junior golf. New courses and improved practice facilities have been given cash injections. The British PGA receives money for its training programs, and not long ago the Women's European Tour was saved from extinction with a timely grant.

In countries like Russia and Czechoslovakia, where transferring cash was difficult, or where there was no opportunity to buy equipment, grants initially took the form of shipments of clubs, balls and shoes. Hungary asked simply for a mower to keep the country's only nine-hole course in better shape.

Other funding goes into research projects on greenskeeping, course management, design and construction, and, increasingly, into environmental, ecological and conservation issues. A special Golf Course Advisory Panel, consisting of experts from all aspects of the game, was established in 1994 to investigate these areas. A recent conference assessed the likely impact of climate changes on the future of golf courses.

Thus, although the outward appearance of the R and A may still seem to many one of privilege and insularity, the fact is that, behind the solid stone walls of the famous clubhouse, a surprisingly small and increasingly youthful team of highly- dedicated specialists is daily at work on just about all aspects of safeguarding golf's future.

A self-deprecating and irreverent but highly developed sense of humor permeates the building, and there has always been a light-hearted edge of rivalry to the regular encounters between the R and A and the USGA. For instance, when years ago the two bodies got together to thrash out a common code of rules in a committee room amid the pomp and splendor of London's parliament buildings, one R and A delegate confided, tongue-in-cheek, that they had got a few things past the Yanks because they were all so busy writing to their friends on House of Lords notepaper.

Many years later, that same man's son was dispatched to America to state the R and A case for abandoning a controversial rule. Facing an intimidating assembly of USGA officials around a boardroom table, he presented his case in painstaking detail, then underwent a session of seemingly hostile questioning. But, when the matter came to a vote, every hand shot into the air in agreement amid a sea of smiling faces. The Americans had already decided to repeal the rule, but thought the R and A man should be put to the test.

Golf, for all but perhaps a few tournament pros, is fun. There's no reason why golf administration shouldn't be fun as well.

The guardians of the game in their imposing clubhouse in Scotland's famed "auld grey toon" are dedicated to protecting and promoting the goodwill, comradeship and healthy sporting competitiveness that has marked golf since its earliest days. Accordingly, while looking to the game's future and its world-wide growth, they also keep a close eye on the traditions of the past six centuries.

At a time when sports administration is not exactly covering itself in glory - drug-taking, Olympic bribery scandals, player strikes, and cretinous loud-mouthed behavior constantly making the headlines - the R and A is keeping a firm grip and a guiding hand on a game that gives pleasure to millions worldwide.

Sure, there are still lots of tweed caps and plus-fours dotting the fairways of the Old Course. But take a closer look and you'll find them concealing golfers from Yonkers or Yokohama as often as members of the R and A.