I’ve just returned from a wonderful holiday with my wife, getting away from it all on the Outer Hebrides, the island chain to the very far north west of Scotland. While there, I also managed to play Askernish!
Firstly, I have to thank Ralph, the clubs chairman, for joining me for the last 12 holes, and also to Melvyn for arranging this. Ralph told me all about the history of the course and what they have done recently, as well as some of their future plans. He also acted well as a caddy with advice on clubs, lines etc, but more of that later.
There has already been quite a bit written on here about the course, but I just had to post some more photos. I’m sure these pictures will bring up a lot of issues already mentioned, but to start off with I’m going to try and concentrate on just letting you know how I felt the course played, and I have to tell you it was incredible fun!
I turned up at the little timber clubhouse where the car park was full. Well both spaces anyway, so I asked someone where I should park (this later turned out to be Allan, a great guy and the clubs greenkeeper) and it seems that the laid back island life starts here. Park the car wherever you want. I then paid my green fee and headed over to the practice putting green, a very undulating raised up green that I later learnt used to be the clubs 9th hole before the recent work. The grass was in comparison to pretty much every other course I’ve ever played pretty long and the greens slow, but I was expecting this. They sort of reminded me of Painswick, for those of you that know there, probably a touch slower, and a good job with some of the undulations that were to come.
Here’s the view of the clubhouse from the putting green.
Hole 1A short par 5, just under 500 yards.
I wandered over to the first tee, sitting up on a small raised area, and looked around. I have to admit I knew where the first hole was heading but with such immature fairways, they don’t exactly jump out at you. But again, this was as I expected. Here’s the view of the first fairway.
The hole dog legs to the right. You can see a dark patch in the centre, which seemed a good line. This turned out to be an unmown ridge separating a small raised area of fairway to the left, from the rest of the fairway. A good line, but if you can hit it far enough right of this is best, but there is a hollow in the rough to the right.
There wasn’t much wind, which was incredible for our short stay on the islands, and I wasn’t well warmed up so I nudged a mid iron down the middle leaving a short iron to the green. This is the view from short of the green, showing how its slightly raised up to the left, but then it slopes down to the right to be pretty much at fairway level.
This can be seen better from the rear. You can see the hollow through the back for anyone who goes long.
Hole 2A short par 3 of 140yards.
This is the view from the tee.
These first few holes are what Ralph later described to me as the flatter and more boring part of the course. I assume this is due to the lack of larger, more striking dunes. This also in some part makes the holes less defined as mentioned earlier, but I believe this will probably change with time as the fairways, greens and rough become more apparent. However it did make judging distances a bit tricky. When Ralph later joined me his local knowledge was a great help. I don’t have a laser but I do often use yardage books or 150 markers though I don’t obsess over them. However this was old fashioned golf in its purest form without any of these aids, and I liked it, though it took several holes for me to really get the feel for the distances, helped when Ralph joined me with his local knowledge. I’m sure with a few more rounds I would have got the hang of it…
Here is the view from just short, the hole appears to be on top of a ridge.
But this picture looking back from the back left shows the spine that runs across the green
Hole 3A short par 4 of 270 yards, though it does dogleg making the direct route to the hole shorter, so unless its wind against, quite a few people will have a chance of getting close to this green with their tee shot. Here’s the view from the tee with the main fairway starting out to the right and dog legging round to the left where you can see the green
This is the view from the fairway. You can see an area of sand in the bottom left of this picture, which is one of the natural areas of erosion, mainly due to the rabbits I suspect. Ralph later told me that in general at present they take relief from these and are trying to cover them over, if they can do something about the rabbits. I’m sure if any get out of hand there is a good chance that they could be turned into “God’s Bunker mkII” but I’ll expand on that when we get to the 12th hole.
And this is from just short of the green.
This is the view from behind the green on the line of an approach from the fairway, which shows the slope of the green better. A shot at the green with your drive comes more from the right on this photo. You can also see a small grassy hump that the green is mown around. This probably shows how in places it really was just a case mowing the greens wherever they found a reasonable spot (when they weren’t the OTM greens).
That’s the first 3 holes and I didn't find them too boring! I’ve lots more photos and lots to mention, thanks to some of Ralph’s storys, but not enough time at the moment. I just wanted to get this thread started as several people have asked me about my experiences there. But I’ll leave it at that for the moment and hopefully post some more holes soon. Also feel free to ask any questions, I’m happy to try and answer, and Ralph has started posting on here recently as well so he will probably chip in.
Cheers,
James