Golf Course Architecture - Issue 61, July 2020

50 the technology available to alter the landscape. There was no such option though for guys like Morris or Braid, and that was much for the better. It is said there is no better architect and shaper than Mother Nature herself, so why fight against her creation, especially when the land is good? Routing a golf course like Old Tom teaches you to appreciate this, and it gets you even more in tune with what that land and those features really are. Our other activities included an environmental management exercise and a bunker building activity with Gordon Irvine, also to be done using the methods of Old Tom Morris’s day. That was particularly fun as we played in the sand, formalising a wild, natural blowout into something ready for golf. Once again, we had to use the resources available at hand. Eroded sod chunks were used for revetting and stabilisation, edges were lowered using a careful collapsing technique, and marram grass was transplanted from nearby to help stabilise the corner where the sand had been mostly blowing out. Everything was very hands-on and in tune with the local micro-environment. At the core of the whole experience though was a real look and understanding of the special natural landscape and links turf of the machair, the Gaelic word for the common linksland shared by grazing animals, hikers, and the Askernish golf course. This land is true golf. Seeing it, experiencing it, and playing over it is like jumping in a time machine to the 1800s or even earlier, especially when wandering the land further beyond the golf course during grazing season. It is on these virgin links further afield – nibbled down tightly by the sheep, cattle, and rabbits — that the lightbulb switches on. It is one thing to talk about and hear that golf is a natural game and came from the shepherds knocking rocks in their fields, but to actually see a puttable green sitting there – all alone – without the influence of man, changes your perception of golf, even if you were expecting that, as I was. Growing up in the American Midwest during the construction boom of the 1990s, the idea of golf and its features being anything ‘natural’ or mimicking nature was always a bit laughable “This land is true golf. Seeing it, experiencing it, and playing over it is like jumping in a time machine to the 1800s” Photo: Toby Brearly