He describes it as finding the greenkeeper's holy grail: the chance discovery
of a course designed by Old Tom Morris, forgotten and overgrown for the best
part of 70 years and crying out to be brought back into play.
And so it was that when Gordon Irvine offered his services free in return for
a spot of fishing on the remote island of South Uist, in the Outer Hebrides,
he got a lot more than he had bargained for. Two years on, and the Scotsman,
43, has yet to cast his first fly.
Irvine, a former British greenkeeper of the year and the man responsible for a
wonderful piece of restoration work at Royal Cinque Ports, in Deal, Kent,
had agreed to advise members at the nine-hole Askernish Golf Club on how to
look after their course. What he did not expect was to be told that the
layout was the work of a golfing giant, the man responsible for such
masterpieces as Muirfield and Carnoustie.
At first, Irvine's scepticism seemed well-founded. Taken to look at the flat,
nine-hole course, he had good and bad news for his new-found friends. “Yep,
no problem at all,” he said. “I can help you guys and would love to get
involved. But I think you can forget the Old Tom Morris bit because there's
no way he laid out this course.”
Then somebody said that he thought the old course was a little farther over
and could not be seen from this position. So they walked to the top of a
rise for a better view and Irvine knew instantly that he was looking at
something special. “It was like all the best links land I had ever seen,” he
said, “just there in front of me.”
What confronted him was an immense dune system spreading as far as the eye
could see, the Irish Sea to his right and the island of Barra in the
distance. To the ordinary eye, pure beauty; to the eye of a master
greenkeeper, pure heaven.
“I said to the lads, - I'll help you with the nine-hole course, but I'll
happily volunteer to help you to get the old course back in play,'” Irvine
said. “I talked them into it and that was the start of it.”
With some crofters arguing [(in court]) that they are losing grazing land, the
restoration has not been plain sailing, however. Money has been in short
supply and most of the work has been done on a voluntary basis - Irvine
flying in once a month, unpaid, to set the next schedule of work for Alan
MacDonald, the club's greenkeeper, and his team of volunteers.
But if all goes according to plan, the course - on which only £50,000 has been
spent - will be open for use in August, in what is the centenary of Morris's
death. Many hope it will help the regeneration of the islands.
Irvine believes the course, which was laid out in 1891 and paid for by Lady
Gordon Cathcart at a mere ten shillings a hole, would have been set up
primarily for her house guests, who would have visited the island to fish
and shoot.
“A few weeks a year, Old Tom's layout would have been cut and prepared for
golf,” he said. “And then once the visitors had left, it would probably have
gone back into being a natural piece of land because the islanders wouldn't
have had access to it.”
When the estate was sold on - it is now owned by the islanders themselves -
the course fell into disuse. Some of the site was flattened for use as an
RAF airfield in the Second World War - the present 6th fairway being
converted into a grass runway - and it is here that the nine-hole course was
placed, on top of some of the original holes.
After recruiting the help of Martin Ebert, a golf-course architect, Irvine
took on the role of detective as he started mapping out fairways and trying
to estimate where the greens would have been sited. There was no blueprint
for the course and so they had to go looking for tell-tale flattened areas,
cutting down long grass to find them.
“I had to try to get inside Old Tom's head,” Irvine said. “The key is to
ignore the modern game and not to go looking for modern golf greens. You
have always to bear in mind that they were designed to be maintained by
scythes or, perhaps, just grazing.”
The first six holes created their own challenge because of the changes wrought
on the landscape by the RAF. It is relatively featureless, but Irvine is
confident that he has found three of the original greens. It offers a
relatively benign opening to a round before a player heads off, heart in
mouth, into the dunes.
As it now stands, the course is a constant source of wonder: golf in the raw,
you will have no idea when playing one hole what awaits you at the next. As
it was 100 years ago, it is not, and will not be, pristine. For the most
part, the greens, in terms of colour, look like an extension of the
fairways, although one hole has a classic links punchbowl green, while the
16th - known as Old Tom's Pulpit - is about 20 feet above the level of the
fairway.
In midwinter, as you climb the rise that caught Irvine's imagination and take
in the views of the par-four 7th, you might be in for something of a shock.
The fairway, running parallel to the sea, will probably be covered in white
sand.
“It is such a huge challenge because the elements are against us with the
amount of sand that blows across it,” Irvine explained. “I've watched this
hole be absolutely battered by the elements and yet, as the summer comes in,
the grass grows out through it. The first time I saw the sand on the
fairway, I thought I had discovered why the course had been abandoned. I was
wrong.”
So, how important is it to be working on an Old Tom Morris course? “He was 72
and near the end of his career,” Irvine said. “It means that he came here
after he had laid out all his other great courses. For me it's a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If it was just maintaining it, that would be
something in itself. But to actually be trying to refurbish one, to try to
follow his work, is an amazing challenge.”
With golf courses coming under increasing scrutiny for their use of chemicals
and pesticides, Irvine is also keen to show that with good husbandry a
course can be sustainable. He welcomes grazing at Askernish (though would
politely request that the greens be left untouched) and plans to mix seaweed
and sand to fertilise the site.
“You must be constantly aware of the damage you can do in a place like this,”
he said. “You always keep in mind that it is a fragile environment and has
been maintained by nature for decades. Before you do anything, you must ask,
‘What's the impact going to be if I start working on this location?'
“This is definitely a museum piece. I'm 100 per cent confident that the bulk
of it is how Old Tom left it and the biggest compliment we can give to all
the guys that are doing the work is that it will look how he intended it.”
Old Tom Morris
Born June 16, 1821, St Andrews, Fife, Scotland
Died May 24, 1908
The player
-Winner of Open Championship in 1861, 1862, 1864 and 1867
-Holds record as the oldest winner of the Open at 46.
-Finished runner-up to his son, Tom Morris Jr, at 1869 Open
-Won £3 after finishing runner-up to Willie Park Sr at first Open, at
Prestwick in 1860
-His record for the largest margin of victory in a major championship (13
strokes) stood for 138 years until Tiger Woods won the US Open by 15 strokes
in 2000
The greenkeeper
-The “father” of modern greenkeeping, he introduced the concept of
top-dressing greens to create level putting surfaces.Realised the importance
of aeration in improving quality of greens. Achieved this naturally by
allowing earthworms to survive Was “Keeper of the Greens” at Prestwick from
1851-64
-Was “Custodian of the Links” at St Andrews for 40 years until retirement in
1904, aged 83. Initially paid £50 per year as the golf professional, plus
£20 per year for maintaining the links
The course designer
-Involved in design and re-design of more than 70 courses across the British
Isles, among them Muirfield, Carnoustie, Prestwick, Royal Dornoch, Royal
County Down and Nairn
-With his design of Muirfield, introduced the concept of each nine holes
returning to the clubhouse
-Added to natural hazards by building and maintaining bunkers. Renowned for
placing greens in natural locations, often nestled between dunes. Others,
such as Old Tom’s Pulpit at Askernish, sit elevated on the top of dunes
Worked on the Old Course at St Andrews for 40 years, “fine-tuning it into
the finest layout in existence”
The early days
-Began career as an apprentice maker of featheries — an early form of ball
made of leather and stuffed with feathers
-Founded club-making business by the side of the 18th green of the Old Course
at St Andrews. The premises are still there
The final days
-Died, aged 86, after sustaining a fractured skull after falling down stairs
at St Andrews
Words by Peter Dixon
