This iconic golf backdrop plays an important role in the Winter Olympics

The original golf course at Trump Turnberry, on the southwest coast of Scotland, has some years on it: 125 to be exact. But that’s nothing compared to the age of one of the course’s famous neighbors: an uninhabited volcanic plug that stands in the Firth of Clyde about 10 miles off the coast of Turnberry.

The origin of that wind-blown granite dome, which rises more than 11 stories out of the sea and is visible from almost every hole in the path of Turnberry’s Aisla, is traced back 600 million years, to those lonely days when the continents were barren and the only signs of life came in the form of bacteria and eukaryotes.

Anyone who played in Turnberry – or, for that matter, Royal Troon or Prestwick, about 25 miles up the coast – will be familiar with the island for the beautiful background it provides. The same number of golfers have attended any of the four Open Championships held at Aisla since 1977, most recently in 2009 when Tom Watson nearly claimed the Claret Jug at age 59.

Aisla Craig featured prominently in all that coverage, as did the hang-gliders of Torrey Pines or the harbor seals of Pebble Beach when the PGA Tour visited those storied spots. The rock is central to the Turnberry experience: an eroded magmatic pluton that not only inspires awe but also happens to play an important role every four years in the Winter Olympics.

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Ricky English is not a golfer. “I’ve tried it before, it’s really hard,” he told me earlier this week in a Scottish accent thicker than a pint of Belhaven Black. “One of those games where one hole you can play like Seve Ballesteros, and then the next hole is in the woods and you lose the ball.”

Besides, English spends most of his days thinking about another sport: curling. If you’re even a casual Olympic watcher — maybe you’ve been following the action in Milan for the past week — you’re familiar with the pursuit, which has been awarding Olympic medals since the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. Tapping, in basic terms, involves a “thrower” pushing a 40-pound boulder down a 150-foot sheet of ice, with the goal of landing the boulder as close as possible to the center of the target (aka “house”) at the end of the ice. Assisting in this process are two players from the team of throwers who move the stone as it slides across the ice, using “brooms”, as needed, to reduce friction on the ice.

English knows a thing or two about those stones because he oversees the process of making them, as the operations manager of Kays Scotland, which since 2006 has been the exclusive manufacturer of Olympic curling stones. “We’re kind of helping the whole game,” English said of his small but mighty factory about 45 minutes’ drive north of Turnberry. “There’s only about 50 employees here. We’re really busy.”

It will probably come as no surprise that Kays favors stoneware: yes, Aisla Craig is her good self.

The island’s Blue Hone sand is used on the edge of the stone while its Standard Blue sand, which is heat and crack resistant, forms the body of the stone. It’s a formula Kays has spent 175 years or more perfecting, with granite found nowhere else in the world. The factory, which is open four days a week, produces about 12 stones per day or 48 per week at a sticker price of about $1,000/per (shipping not included). That may sound steep, but when you look at most stones that last about 30 years, the cost may also sound like a bargain.

“We have to keep our quality standards high for every stone,” English said. “Whether we make a stone for the Olympics or make a stone for [curling] club in Alabama, it’s the same quality control, the exact same way of making it go into it. There is no difference.”

Kays ships stones all over the world, from the US to China, Japan and South Korea to Mongolia and New Zealand, to . . . Antarctica. “They’re using it as a kind of luxury experience thing,” English said. “It’s like minus-36 degrees, so I wasn’t sure about the temperature and the conditions what the stones would be like, but they seem to be fine.”

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While Aisla Craig’s granite is particularly suited to rolling stones, it has also found its way to Turnberry’s golf shop in the form of ball markers and other granite-based memorabilia. Kays also endorsed the St. Louis club maker. Andrews to build four hickory golf clubs where the Kays put together a common Green caulk in the shafts. They sell quickly. “So, yeah,” English said of his team’s craft, “there’s a lot of golf involved.”

English said he also sees an overlap between the skills required in both curling and golf, and, in fact, it’s not hard to see the similarities between sliding a rock down the snow and rolling a ball on the green. “There are a few players we know who are good golfers,” he said. “They have the kind of skills that come from curling, through touch and feel, and they take that to golf.”

But English has little time to work on his swing or stroke. He has emails to answer and orders to fill, especially in this busy window where his stones are enjoying a full four years in the international spotlight. To capitalize on the advertising, Kays’ online store was selling Olympic-themed giftware (coasters, drink cubes) made from Aisla Craig granite. Most of the orders so far have come from the US, and the British suspect that’s at least partly due to a certain rap legend on the NBC reporting team in Milan.

“Snoop Dog was going to fold,” English said. “That might help.”

Six hundred million years of history doesn’t hurt either.