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Getting to experience The Old Course at St. Andrews is a bucket list item for practically every golfer out there. The iconic Scottish venue (the oldest golf course on the planet) is steeped in centuries of history and tradition, and while Tiger Woods has made his mark there, he’s facing resistance from locals who aren’t thrilled to hear about his plans to open up a sports bar in the area with Justin Timberlake.
Neither of those guys has much left to prove or achieve thanks to how they’ve fared over the course of the careers that have made them household names, but that didn’t stop them from branching out a bit by teaming up to create a massive sports bar called “T-Squared Social Club” that recently opened up in New York City.
It’s a fairly ambitious project, but the duo apparently isn’t content with stopping there, as The Courier reports they’ve set their sights on the New Picture House, an independent movie theater located on North Street in the town of St. Andrews around a 15-minute walk away from the Old Course.
However, the outlet reports Timberlake and the man who secured the Claret Jug when the British Open was held at St. Andrews in 2000 and 2005 are facing some resistance from locals who aren’t exactly thrilled with their vision for what one city council member described as an “iconic” landmark.
Woods and Timberlake submitted plans that would involve preserving one of the theater’s three screens while overhauling the rest of the building to construct a sports bar featuring golf simulators, bowling lanes, and other forms of entertainment.
However, some people who reside in St. Andrews believe the “celebrity vanity project” ignores the needs of locals who say they still use the cinema for its intended purpose, asserting the bar would primarily cater to tourists while subsequently sucking some of the historic character out of the town.
The manager director of the building seems to be in favor of the proposed conversion, but that kind of comes with the territory when Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake hit you up to see if you’d be interested in accepting a presumably giant check.