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Royal and Ancient Golf Club

Ian Pattinson announced as new Royal and Ancient Captain

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The R&A
08 May 24
3 mins
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The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews has announced that Ian Pattinson will serve as Captain in 2024/25, having been nominated by the Past Captains of the Club. 

He will begin his year in office after the traditional Driving-in ceremony on the first tee of the Old Course on Friday, 20 September 2024.

After a career as a solicitor in the City of Cambridge, he retired from his partnership in a regional law firm in 2014.

Hails from a golfing family

Mr Pattinson was raised in a golfing family. His father Reg played in The Open on two occasions as an amateur, represented England and won the inaugural Senior Amateur Championship in 1969. Ian Pattinson was educated at The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read Law and captained Cambridge University Golf Club. He has also represented Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and subsequently Cambridgeshire at county level. His current Handicap Index is 4.9.  Mr Pattinson became a Member of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 1989 and has served the Club and the R&A Group in numerous roles in the last 30 years, including as Chairman of the Rules of Golf and the Equipment Standards Committees and as the first ever Chairman of the World Handicap Board. From 2018 to 2022, he was Chairman of the General Committee and Chairman of the R&A Group boards. 
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Pattinson served as a Rules Official at The Open from 1995 to 2018 and on multiple occasions at many championships around the world.

Rules official at The Open

He served as a Rules Official at The Open from 1995 to 2018 and on multiple occasions at the Masters Tournament between 1997 and 2019. He has also been a Rules Official at the US Open, the PGA Championship, the AIG Women’s Open and the Solheim Cup as well as leading amateur events including the Walker Cup, the Curtis Cup, the World Amateur Team Championships and the Arnold Palmer Cup. In addition to his refereeing duties, Mr Pattinson was The R&A’s Rules of Golf Advisor to the BBC for The Open from 2004 to 2015 and he performed a similar role for Sky Sports from 2016 to 2018. Mr Pattinson was Co-Chairman of the International Golf Federation Administrative Committee from 2018 to 2022 and became Chairman of England Golf in 2023. He is a board member of the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation and a Trustee of Ely Cathedral Charitable Trust. Elsewhere in golf, Mr Pattinson is an Honorary Member of Royal Worlington & Newmarket Golf Club, where he was Captain in its centenary year in 1993 and has served as President since 2023. He is also a member of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers; Royal West Norfolk Golf Club; Merion Golf Club (USA), the Oxford & Cambridge Golfing Society and the Senior Golfers’ Society. Mr Pattinson’s wife Jan is also a keen golfer and a two-time past Lady Captain of Royal Worlington & Newmarket. The couple live in the Cambridge area and have two sons, James and Jonathan, and two grandsons.
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Royal and Ancient Golf Club