Brahan Golf Club, New Project

[Jon Wiggett]

There have been several threads in recent times asking what new projects are going to happen in the forseeable future. A few weeks ago I was able to put in a thread ( http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,40526.0/ ) about the opening of a new practice facility I designed and built at Kerns in Switzerland. Until now I haven抰 said much about my project in the Highlands of Scotland as not all the necessary things were in place but after a sucessful trip to Scotland last week I now feel able to share with other GCA抏rs more details about this project which I will will be starting towards the end of september this year.

Brahan Golf Club will be a nine hole pay & play course with a high quality guest house, Tollie Guest House, on site. The Tollie Guest House also offers other sporting activities such as fishing, mountain biking, walking and horse riding to its clients. For those who know the area, the location is a piece of land at (former Tollie Scout Camp) near Maryburgh with good access from the A835 main road. This has an excellent location 11 miles and a 15 minute drive to the north of Inverness.

The land itself is well suited to the golf course being free draining and having enough movement without it being excessive. There is a croft house which has the necessary services that can be renovated for a small clubhouse facility. A feasibility study has proven the demand for a pay & play facility in this location and a planning application was submitted and accepted in June 2009 for the golf course as well a new building to house the Tollie Guest House and manager抯 accommodation.

The idea is to provide a nine hole golf course that plays as two 18 hole courses. The golfer will be offered good quality, interesting golf on a facility kept in top condition. Those people who know me will know that I will be using environmentally friendly construction/maintenance methods. This will be combined with high quality bed and breakfast accommodation for the golfer and non golfer alike.

Obstacles will consist mainly of grass bunkers, sand bunkers, gorse, heather and islands of deep rough but in general the ball should be easily found and remain playable. Natural quirks existing on the site will be used and enhanced as appropriate creating an interesting golf course for all standards of player. The course will have a grassland feel and rather than being meticulously groomed, will blend into the surrounding countryside.

By making the greens large enough to accommodate two different hole locations at the same time and using alternative tee positions, the golfer will face a different set of challenges on his second round of nine holes. Some holes will be Par 3抯 the first round but Par 4抯 the second time around or change from Par 4抯 into Par 5抯 and vice versa. Another feature of the course will be that it can be played in two directions with the direction being alternated every other day. Effectively two different, 18 hole courses will be created out of the one piece of land.

Drawing on the experience I have gained over the last 20 odd years in the golf industry and especially in golf course construction I will be doing most of the construction work myself.

Brahan Golf Club will be (as far as I can assertain) the only pure commercial pay & play course in the highlands (with no membership) and will be offering greenfees in the low-mid price bracket. 80 % of the finance is my own capital with the other 20% being in the form of investment bonds of which 50 have already been taken so 90% is in place which is enough for me to be able to start. I still have 50 񊲾00 investment bonds which offer a fixed 4% interest rate so if anyone is interested please contact me per mail and I will send on more details about the project. This final capital, although not vital, would enable me to add one or two final touches which would be nice to have from the start as it will be more expensive to add these in at a later date.

I will be adding details as time goes on. The website www.brahangolfclub.ch at the moment is in german only but I will be getting the english part up to speed in the next few days.

Looking forward to your questions and comments gents

Jon 

[Jon Wiggett]

bump

[Norbert P]

Jon, the venture and the golf design sounds ambitious and I applaud your courage.
 
How would you describe  the geology?
Is the land east or west of the railroad tracks?
If there are no memberships then I assume your target customer is the tourist?
Is the permitting in place?



 

[Bob_Huntley]

Jon,

Your brochure was most impressive but more so, was my wife's abilty to translate it into English!

Good luck on your venture.

Best wishes.

Bob

[Charlie Goerges]

Jon,

Do you have any photos, maps, topos of the site that you'd be willing to share? This is a neat-sounding project. I'm curious if, in order to make the course playable in reverse, you might need to compromise some of the quality of the holes - especially the greens?

[Jon Wiggett]

Sorry I have taken so long answering but as you can imagine it is very time consuming preparing for the start of building a golf course and working on the side as well. The website now is in english and not just german and I will be adding to it in the near future. Thanks to all those who have been in touch, it is a real 'pick me up' to know how many are interested.

Jon, the venture and the golf design sounds ambitious and I applaud your courage.
 
How would you describe  the geology?
It is set in a shallow valley that climbs gently to the west. There is about 3-6 foot of topsoil with mainly sandstone below. The site as a whole drains well
Is the land east or west of the railroad tracks?
Not sure which railway tracks. It is just north of the A835 about 1 mile west of Maryburgh
If there are no memberships then I assume your target customer is the tourist?
Yes, tourists are obviously one of the target customer groups but as there are no pure pay and play courses in the lower price bracket in the area I expect local golfers will also be a main group as well
Is the permitting in place?
Yes, the permits are all in place

Jon,

Do you have any photos, maps, topos of the site that you'd be willing to share?
Yes, I will get some photos of the site posted in the next few days
This is a neat-sounding project. I'm curious if, in order to make the course playable in reverse, you might need to compromise some of the quality of the holes - especially the greens?
It is difficult to say as the only way to really know is to build the course as a stanard oneway playable course and then rip it up a do the reverse playable one. As I don't have the budget nor the time the answer will always remain a matter of opinion. I am lucky that the land lends itself to such a course very well. I have however only done the routing and the whole design of the greens and bunkers will be done onsite after playing the land and hitting many shots. I am sure that there will be certain holes that will play better in the one direction. It is my hope to get the courses well balanced and have the correct rhythm. At the moment I don't know if the courses will be par 67s or 73s or maybe both

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Cheers,

Jon

[Jim Eder]

This is really interesting.  This answers my new topic to some degree.  It is possible and I can't wait to play it for myself. I can't wait to see more pics of the course and learn more about it.

[Ben Stephens]

Jon,

Any chance to see some images of each hole that you have developed at Brahan

Cheers
Ben

[Jon Wiggett]

Thanks for asking, its coming shortly Ben I promise.

Jon

[Ben Stephens]

Thanks for asking, its coming shortly Ben I promise.

Jon

Jon,

No probs look forward to seeing any construction images as well as the current state of the course.

Cheers
Ben

[Bill Crane]

Jon:
I was fortunate enough to play Pocantico Hills, the truly private reversible golf course built by the Rockefellers and designed by the underappreciated William Flynn.  There are ten tees and sets of tees.   My host from the family characterized the course as "Flynn's best design".  It is located at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate in Sleepy Hollow, NY near Tarrytown and features commanding views of the Hudson River.  I believe there are tours of the property through the Historic Hudson Valley group.

While I am not a golf course architect it may be an interesting exercise to review the design.  The course is open off the tee in many places, but has typically interesting Flynn greens.  An aerial view of the property such as Bing maps will not reveal how hllly the property is, with the grade sloping away from the main estate mansion and the "playhouse" where the first tee is located.

There are also some interesting insights into Pocantico Hills in Wayne Morrison and Tom Paul's thorough bible of Flynn's work entitled "The Nature Faker" that may be insightful.

Best of luck on your interesting project.

[Brian_Ewen]

https://www.scotsman.com/news/crime/highland-golf-club-owner-and-pga-professional-stole-ps150k-tax-and-tried-back-fraud-fake-invoices-lawn-mower-herbicide-and-sand-mix-2978984

[Ally Mcintosh]

Well, I抦 very sorry to hear that.

[Marty Bonnar]

Strange, sad news. Been following the story since March when it first surfaced. Maybe Jon will come back sometime and explain.
F.

[Brian_Ewen]

Sentence seems awfully steep, does it not?

[Duncan Cheslett]

Sentence seems awfully steep, does it not?

It does. It抯 only money after all.


People get less for acts of extreme violence.

[Kalen Braley]

I was thinking quite the opposite.

A guy holds up a corner market for a few hundred dollars in the cash drawer and get 8-10 years for armed robbery.
Steal billions on Wall Street, you get to keep most of it, pay 10-20% back in the form of a fine, and avoid jail time altogether.

[John Mayhugh]

I hate seeing this. Hopefully Brahan and Jon's B&B survive this. I really enjoyed my brief time visiting there.

Kalen,
The amount of property stolen should matter, for sure. But are you seriously suggesting that armed robbery isn't that bad if the perpetrator doesn't steal much of value? FFS

[Kalen Braley]

I hate seeing this. Hopefully Brahan and Jon's B&B survive this. I really enjoyed my brief time visiting there.

Kalen,
The amount of property stolen should matter, for sure. But are you seriously suggesting that armed robbery isn't that bad if the perpetrator doesn't steal much of value? FFS

John,

I've had first hand experience with this and i'm not suggesting its trivial.  But it should be weighed into the punishment of how many people were affected and by how much, even if they didn't have several guns pointed at them like I did.

Where is the larger impact?  One person getting robbed of a few hundred dollars, (which wasn't even that much in my case), or 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands being robbed of a far bigger aggregate amount with life savings being wiped out and a whole tidal wave of negative effects?