Golf
“We had over 200,000 tonnes of rock, rubble, sand and debris on the course, along with twelve feet of landlocked saltwater on
some parts, our 7th tee was washed away and we lost almost half a hectare of land. Holidays were cancelled!”
5th green at bottom of the bank, 6th tee and 7th all submerged
that we were going in the right direction at Golspie and that we should push on and keep improving the course. As the seasons went by, our course was
improving a lot. We were getting the odd magazine column and local press were saying how much the course was improving.
Then, in 2011, we entered the Scottish
The sea starting to engulf the course - December 15th, 2012
“The sea was 160 yards beyond the sea defences, waves were throwing rocks - weighing nearly a tonne - around like sweetie papers”
14 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2014
Top 100 Courses; the highest new entry at 69. The committee were trusting us to get on with the job, making any alterations that we felt were needed, whilst anything major would go in front of an EGM. One major alteration I proposed was to turn the 1st in to a par 5, the original being a 458 yard dog leg left to an elevated green. We moved the tee back to in front of the clubhouse and it is now a 493 yard par 5 that is much more friendly than the previous hole. In 2012, National Club Golfer had rated us as the 54th best Links course in Britain. We found this out in December, just before we were about to get off on a month long holiday over the Christmas period. On Friday 14th December, we were hit by the biggest storm in living memory. Winds of over 70mph got up instantly and, coupled with a big tide and very low air pressure, the sea engulfed the
course. We had over 200,000 tonnes of rock, rubble, sand and debris on the course, along with twelve feet of landlocked saltwater on some parts. Our 7th tee was washed away and we lost almost half a hectare of land. Holidays were cancelled!
I went over on the Saturday during the peak of the storm and seriously felt like six years of hard work had literally been washed away; the course was devastated. I walked about the course seeing jobs that were completed just a few days earlier, ruined and being washed out. The sea was 160 yards beyond the sea defences, waves were throwing rocks - weighing nearly a tonne - around like sweetie papers. It was an incredible force to witness. The next day I went over at 8.00am to survey the damage. I grabbed the tractor with the loader and a shovel and headed to the 3rd green to start clearing. The greens were obviously the priority, get them cleared first and deal with the rest later. As I plodded away, a couple of members came and joined me and, before we knew it, there was a dozen people clearing tonnes of debris off the 3rd green. We then moved on to the 18th and got the 4th done too, shovelling tonnes of sand off that one.
Verti-draining sand into the greens
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