This iconic wave backdrop plays a vital role during the Winter Olympics

The original golf course at Trump Turnberry, on the south-west coast of Scotland, has been around for several years: 125 to be precise. But that’s nothing compared to the age of one of the course’s famous neighbors: the uninhabited volcanic plug that stands sentinel in the Firth of Clyde, about 10 miles off Turnberry’s coastline.

The origins of that wind-battered granite dome, which rises more than eleven stories from the sea and is visible from almost every hole on Turnberry’s Aisla course, go 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 has played at Turnberry – or, for that matter, Royal Troon or Prestwick, some 25 miles up the coast – will know the island for the beautiful backdrop it provides. The same goes for golf enthusiasts who have signed up for one of the four Open Championships held at the Aisla course since 1977, most recently in 2009 when Tom Watson almost claimed the Claret Jug at the age of 59.

The Aisla Craig featured prominently in all those broadcasts, just as the hang gliders of Torrey Pines or the harbor seals of Pebble Beach do when the PGA Tour visits these legendary locations. The rock is a staple of the Turnberry experience: an eroded magmatic pluton that not only inspires awe, but also happens to play a vital role every four years during the Winter Olympics.

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Ricky English isn’t much of a golfer. “I’ve tried it before, it’s quite difficult,” he told me earlier this week in a Scottish accent thicker than a pint of Belhaven Black. “It’s one of those games where you can play one hole like Seve Ballesteros, and the next hole is in the woods and you’ve lost the ball.”

Moreover, English spends most of his days playing another sport: curling. If you’re even a casual Olympic watcher (perhaps you’ve been following the action in Milan this past week) you’re certainly familiar with the Chase, which has been handing out Olympic medals since the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan. Curling, in its most basic terms, involves a “thrower” pushing a rock weighing approximately 40 pounds across a 150-foot-long sheet of ice, with the goal of stopping the rock as close as possible to the center of a target (also called “the house”) on the other side of the ice. This involves two of the thrower’s teammates flanking the rock as it slides across the ice, using “brooms” if necessary to reduce the friction of the ice.

English knows a thing or two about those stones because he oversees the process of making them as operations manager for Kays Scotland, which has been the exclusive manufacturer of curling stones for the Olympics since 2006. “We basically serve the entire sport,” English said of his small but mighty factory, about a 45-minute drive north of Turnberry. “There are only about 50 employees here. We are very busy.”

It probably comes as no surprise where Kays collects the materials for the bricks: yes, Aisla Craig is her good self.

The Island’s Blue Hone granite is used on the walking edge of the stone, while the Common Green granite, which resists heat transfer and spalling, forms the body of the stone. It’s a formula that Kays has perfected over the past 175 years, using granite found nowhere else on earth. The factory, which is open four days a week, produces approximately 12 bricks per day or 48 per week with a sticker price of approximately $1,000/per (excluding shipping). That may sound high, but when you consider that most stones last about 30 years, the cost may also sound like a bargain.

“We have to maintain our own quality standards for each stone,” English said. “Whether we are making a stone for the Olympic Games or making a stone for one [curling] club in Alabama, it’s the same quality control, the exact same way it’s made. 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, even to . . . Antarctica. “They’re using it as a kind of luxury experience,” English said. “It’s minus-36 degrees, so I wasn’t sure what the stones would be like because of the temperature and conditions, but they seemed to be fine.”

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While Aisla Craig’s granite is ideally suited for curling stones, it has also found its way into Turnberry’s golf shop in the form of ball markers and other granite-based memorabilia. Kays also commissioned a St. Andrews clubmaker to build four hickory golf clubs in which Kays incorporated Common Green granite into the base. They sold quickly. “So yeah,” English said of his team’s work, “there are little ties to golf.”

English said he also sees some intersection between the skills required in both curling and golf, and indeed it’s not hard to see the parallels between sliding a rock off a patch of ice and rolling a ball on a smooth green. “There are a few curlers we know who are actually really good golfers,” he said. “They have the kind of skills from curling, with touch and feel, and they have taken that into golf.”

But Engels has little time to work on his own swing or stroke. He has to answer emails and fulfill orders, especially in this busy period when his stones enjoy their moment in the international spotlight every four years. To capitalize on the publicity, Kays’ online store is selling Olympic-themed gift items (coasters, drink cubes) made from Aisla Craig granite. The majority of orders so far have come from the US, and Engels suspects this is at least partly due to a certain rap legend on NBC’s reporting team in Milan.

“Snoop Dog was at curling,” English said. “That might have helped.”

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