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Niall C

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Inverallochy Golf Course
« on: October 20, 2012, 08:45:39 AM »
WARNING: This is NOT a photo tour !

Yesterday I went through to Fraserburgh in Scotland's north east coast to play a round over their championship course and also took the opportunity afterwards to play Inverallochy which is just 3 miles along the road. While I thoroughly enjoyed Fraserburgh and would happily play it again, it was Inverallochy that caught the eye most.

This little known links is perhaps best remembered, if at all, for a match played in 1905 between a team of fishermen representing the club against the great and the good of AJ Balfour and a team of Parliamentarians with the game played at Sandwich. On that occasion the politicians won, thanks perhaps to the fisherman enjoying lunch rather too much and therefore failing to show any form at all in the afternoon games.

These days many of the members still work in the fishing business as is evidenced by the hole sponsors. Its quite appropriate therefore that you can see the sea on every hole (unlike Fraserburgh where you can't see the sea on ANY hole) if you bother to look. While the sea is ever present it never comes into play and neither is their any real attempt by whoever designed it to present any particular views although there are some scenic and extensive views down the coastline.

The course certainly isn't long which perhaps accounts for its relatively anonimity. Its what one might term good holiday golf, or rather great holiday golf. At 5,370 yards from the tips and sporting a par 67 (medal) and 66 (yellows) it perhaps looks on paper to be a push over however the relatively small but beautifully contoured greens are the courses real defence. The course sports 6 par 3's, three of which are between 190 and 200 yards and another at 188 yards which for most club golfers means more often a 4 rather than a 3. To make up for that there are 3 driveable par 4's at comfortably under 300 yrds and indeed only 3 holes of 400 yards plus, one of which is a par 5.

So much for the stats. The first few holes are completely wide open on perhaps the flatest bit of the land. Lots of room to hit out and to sample some great seaside turf. Holes 2 and 4 have greens complexes that nestle into the dunes but on the hole those opening holes are on the flat. Thereafter the routing enters into a bit of a bottle neck (medium length par 3 to plateau green) before playing over a raised area before coming back on lower ground on the seaward side before playing through the bottleneck with a lovely little par 3. In some respects its a similar routing to Cruden Bay.

The remaining holes, while furthest away from the sea, if anything have the most rumple and contours on the fairways. It does look as though the course has been re-jigged to create a new 4th so that the old 4th becomes the 17th playing away from the clubhouse with a new 18th going back up the way. The net result that the course now finishes with two "good length" par 4's rather than two par 3's. I also suspect quite a few of the green complexes are relatively new but all the better for that although some of the more recent bunkering is a bit clunky. Overall though, great fun with bags of interest.

Anyone else played it ? Also, anyone know who might have been repsonsible for the recent design work ?

Niall

Gary Slatter

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Re: Inverallochy Golf Course
« Reply #1 on: October 20, 2012, 02:05:50 PM »
Niall, need pictures!   Never played it but had great fish and chips nearby.
Gary Slatter
gary.slatter@raffles.com

Brian_Ewen

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Re: Inverallochy Golf Course
« Reply #2 on: October 20, 2012, 05:01:54 PM »
Niall
Wheest !

Hidden Gems are supposed to end with Cruden Bay  ::)

Niall C

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Inverallochy Golf Course
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2012, 07:43:22 AM »
Gary

As I sometimes do when I play a new course, I took quite a lot of pictures, right up to the point where it got a bit too gloomy for the pics to turn out. Sadly I haven't yet learned the magic of posting pictures, but one day............

Brian

Having lived up north for a few years, I'm surprised this course hasn't got a bit more of a rep, or at least if it has I haven't heard it. Is it well known through your way ?

Niall

David_Tepper

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Re: Inverallochy Golf Course
« Reply #4 on: October 21, 2012, 12:49:39 PM »
The club's website does have a modest photo tour of the course:

http://www.inverallochygolfclub.co.uk/walkfront.html

Phil McDade

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Re: Inverallochy Golf Course
« Reply #5 on: October 22, 2012, 09:57:07 PM »
Niall:

Thanks for posting this; it brought back some great memories of my round at Inverallochy several years ago.

In my view, Inverallochy is -- symbolically, in some ways, but still legitimately so -- one of the truly important historic sites in the history of the game.

Golf, in its earliest days of developing across the Scottish land, was really a game of the very wealthy, and therefore limited in its participation. That was largely due to the cost of the game, namely the equipment and most particularly the cost of the ball -- the feathery. Featheries were (relatively) expensive to make, expensive to buy, and fell apart quite easily. Only those with the means to buy many featheries could take up the game, and thus in its early days the game was limited to pockets of wealth in the country -- around Edinburgh and Glasgow, Perth, coastal communities where trade was prominent (Aberdeen), and of course St. Andrews and Fife, long one of the wealthiest corners of Scotland.

The gutta percha -- introduced in mid-19th century, and the most important technological development in the history of the game -- changed all that. Suddenly a cheap and durable ball made the game affordable and accessible to nearly everyone. Growth in the game exploded, and for the next 50 years or so, clubs and courses were developed in nearly every corner of the country. Among those corners was the tiny fishing village of Inverallochy. Founders of the club used a spit of land ideal for links golf, and fashioned a traditional out-and-back course in which the golfers playing there became quite proficient, as Niall's story attests. The success of the Inverallochy golfers, described in Niall's story, would be the equivalent of some small community in a tiny corner of the United States developing enough good golfers to hold their own against Euro's latest Ryder Cup team.

Technology continued to lead to improvements in the game, including the introduction of the Haskell ball around the turn of the century. Most golfers of course abandoned the old gutta percha for the newer ball that flew longer and straighter. But not the golfers at Inverallochy; there were among the last golfers in Scotland to foresake the "guttie" for the newer, improved ball.

I always thought their allegiance to the old ball, in a small but significant way, symbolized what the game is truly like in Scotland -- it's really the national sport, played or followed in some way by nearly everyone. It became that way in part due to the innovation of the gutta percha. And the reluctance of the golfers of the little fishing village on the northeastern shoulder of Scotland to give it up demonstrates -- at least for me -- what the game meant to them in the first place.


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