Sir Kenny Dalglish: Anfield, Augusta and all points in between

Officially, he’s a knight of the realm and, therefore, a ‘Sir’. But, to those who know better, Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish will forever be ‘King Kenny’.

Without question one of the greatest footballers Britain has ever produced, the 72-year-old’s CV takes some beating. Nine major honours with Celtic, a further 15 with Liverpool – including three European Cup wins – and a record 102 caps for Scotland barely do justice to his playing career. As a manager, 11 trophies with Liverpool preceded an unlikely English Premier League title success with Blackburn Rovers.

All of which is to say nothing of the crucial goals he scored, his Hall of Fame inductions, investiture ceremonies, nor the time he finished runner-up to Michel Platini for the sport’s prestigious Ballon d’Or award.

If there was a royal family for football, the House of Dalglish would rule all. Not that you’d catch him lording it up. These days, the best place to find Dalglish is on the golf course. And so it goes that on this particularly crisp November morning, he’s in the clubhouse at Trump Turnberry tucking into a bacon roll shortly before he tackles the iconic Ailsa Course.

“I’ve only played here a few times before,” he says. “Although I hear it’s changed a lot since the last time. Aye, I’m looking forward to this.”

Dalglish will likely become a regular visitor to the Ayrshire resort as one of the 50 founding members of its brand-new Ailsa Club. This premium package is designed to offer a VIP experience that includes unlimited golf on both the Ailsa and King Robert The Bruce courses, guest passes, bed and breakfast overnights in the five-star hotel, full use of the Trump Spa, horse-riding, clay-pigeon shooting, archery, access to the Tom Watson private members’ lounge in the clubhouse and much more besides.

It’s in the aforementioned lounge that we find Dalglish. It’s an undeniably impressive set-up. As you walk in, the wall to the left is fully occupied by a spectacular whisky display. Fifty bottles are contained in separate, identical cases, one for each of the Ailsa Club’s founding members.

There are also luxurious Chesterfield sofas to kick back in and call bells for waiter service on each of the tables. None of this comes cheap – membership starts from £12,000 a year with a £3,000 joining fee – but it’s not designed to be a mass market offering. This is for discerning golfers with plenty of disposable time and income.

How distant a prospect that must have seemed to a young Dalglish.

Born in 1951 in Glasgow’s hard-as-nails east end, he was raised in the equally tough Milton district on the northern edge of the city. Indeed, the first football team Dalglish ever turned out for was a youth side called ‘Milton Milan’.

Many family holidays were spent just down the road from Turnberry.

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“We used to come to Girvan for family summer holidays quite often but I could never have dreamed of coming down here to play,” he says. “We were stuck in Glasgow playing the municipal courses up there, mainly Ruchill and Littlehill. I actually think one of Sandy Lyle’s relatives used to be the pro at Littlehill. In any case, that was the sum total of our golf growing up, those wee council courses.”

Like most young boys growing up post-War west of Scotland, Dalglish was sport-daft.

“We had a wee black and white television,” he recalls. “If there was athletics on, we’d have a race around the blocks. If the tennis was on, we’d go and hire bats and a ball and use the public courts in the local park. Anything, apart from cricket basically.”

It wasn’t long before golf crossed his radar.

“If you could find a golf ball, you were a local hero,” he grins. “Me and my friends would go into one of the local parks, dig a hole into the ground and put an empty can of Heinz soup into it, with some stones in the bottom to weigh it down.

“As we got older and more interested in it, we’d walk from our house to Ruchill for nine holes. It was a fair trek but it didn’t really matter at that age. We were just happy to be out and having fun. There was this one hole down by the canal, I swear I never once saw a flag in the hole all the time we played there. It was usually just a twig.”

It was a matter of weeks after Celtic beat Inter Milan to become the first British club to win the European Cup that Dalglish signed his first professional contract with the Glasgow giants.

After a season on loan at junior side Cumbernauld United, he became a regular in a Celtic reserve side that was affectionately nicknamed the ‘Quality Street Gang’, due to the large number of highly rated players it contained, future Scottish internationals Danny McGrain, George Connelly, Lou Macari and David Hay amongst them.

As his football career blossomed so, too, did his other big passion.

“When I started earning a decent wage, I was able to buy myself a decent set of clubs for the first time,” he says. “I didn’t join a club at first because I didn’t need to. It used to be that, on a Sunday, there’d be a charity golf event to play in, so we were never short of somewhere to play. It was just a great way to relax.

“I’d mostly play with the other young guys, like Danny, Paddy McCluskey and so on. But some of the older players would join us every so often, like Stevie Chalmers. He was a cracking player.”

After a trophy-laden decade with the green-and-white half of Glasgow, Dalglish moved south to join Bob Paisley’s Liverpool for £440,000 – around £3million in today’s money and, at the time, a British transfer record. He has lived in the area ever since and recently joined ten-time Open host venue Royal Birkdale.

Indeed, whilst his football career ended long ago – he made his 515th and final appearance for Liverpool on May 5, 1990 – his golf obsession has only intensified. The bags and bags of clubs in his garage are testament to that.

“There’s no’ much room for a car in there, put it that way,” he laughs.

Have clubs, will travel. By his own admission, Dalglish has pegged it up in some spectacular parts of the world.

“The first place that comes to mind is South Africa,” he says. “I’ve got a good relationship with Gary Player that goes back several years. In fact, the first time I played Turnberry was with Gary in the Pro-Celebrity television series. It was nine holes in the morning and nine in the afternoon. I had him in the afternoon and we played against Jimmy Tarbuck and Tony Jacklin. I’ll no’ tell you the score but we won.

“But aye, I’m going to South Africa again soon to play in Gary’s charity event out at Sun City, which is always good fun. And obviously, I’ve been to Spain to play plenty of times.”

When he’s not playing golf, you’ll find Dalglish watching it. He tunes in to all the big tournaments and was one of the 785,000 people who tuned in every day to watch Sky Sports’ coverage of this year’s Ryder Cup.

“I thought it was a bit of a surprise win,” he says. “But the way they laid the course out probably suited the Europeans a bit better. Then there’s the whole thing of fail to prepare, prepare to fail. I mean, the Americans not playing for five weeks, I don’t think they did themselves any favours. Fair enough, one of them [Jordan Spieth] had to stay at home because his wife was about to have a baby, but no’ 12 of them.”

Like every other proud Scot, Dalglish was particularly pleased to see rookie Robert MacIntyre make such a significant contribution to the cause. The 27-year-old was one of only three players to go unbeaten in Rome, overcoming a nervy start to put two-and-a-half points out of a possible three on the board.

“I was glad he got some points because he’d had a bit of a bad run,” says Dalglish. “He would have taken a lot of confidence from having the likes of [Shane] Lowry geeing him up and encouraging him.

“And Viktor Hovland? He was off the charts. Jesus Christ, just incredible. What a player he is.”

Whilst he tunes in regularly to Sky Sports for his golf fix, Dalglish admits that he preferred watching golf back when it was on BBC, and for two reasons.

“There were no adverts. I mean, I get that they have to have them but I’d rather they didn’t. And Peter Alliss was brilliant. Irreplaceable. What a character.”

His favourite tournament to watch? That’s easy. The Masters. Dalglish has been tuning-in to the first men’s major of the year for longer than he cares to remember but it wasn’t until 2015 that he got the chance to go there and experience Augusta National for the first time.

“The gaffer [wife Marina] bought the tickets for my birthday,” he laughs. “It was brilliant. Every bit as good as you’d hope. When you walk in, it’s like going into Disney. It’s like golf’s ‘Magic Kingdom’.

“And see when you’re inside the gates, everything’s reasonably priced. A drink, a sandwich – they didn’t rip you off. It’s funny, we’d just walked onto the grass and I remember saying to Marina, ‘Here, wait a minute, it’s plastic turf.’ Then I bent down to touch up, popped straight back up and went, ‘Actually, no, it’s no’.

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“I’ll tell you what I really liked, though. I liked how you could plonk your chair down and, if you stuck your business card in the wee window of the back of it, that made it yours.

“You could then go away, have a wee wander and if you came back to your chair and somebody was in it, they had to give it up because, if they didn’t, they’d be chucked out. Everybody just does what they’re supposed to do and follows the rules.”

Spectating is one thing but Dalglish is much happier when he’s playing golf. He’s currently averaging a couple of rounds a week and is maintaining a more than respectable handicap of 7.5.

“We’ve got a game this Saturday,” he says. “We play in two-balls and I’m first out. Big Hansen’s behind me, so I expect he’ll be giving me gyp as usual.”

What does that look like? Playing deliberately faster just to be annoying?

“Naw,” laughs Dalglish. “He cannae play fast. He’s the same as he was as a footballer!”

Now that he’s part of the new Ailsa Club, Dalglish will have plenty more opportunities to work on his game on one of the toughest, but most exhilarating, courses on the planet.

“It’s a huge honour to be invited to join,” he says. “It’s something I could never have imagined when I was just getting into golf as a young lad, so it’s a huge thrill. Aye, suffice to say I’ll be taking full advantage of it.”

Portrait: Eve Conroy / DC Thomson

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This feature first appeared in issue 208 of bunkered (December 2003). For more content like this, delivered direct to your door, why not take out a subscription? International subscriptions also available.

Michael McEwan is bunkered's Head of Content and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Head of Content