I have received a copy of an article from Niall Carlton he found in Golfing dating from November 5th 1903 on Askernish and the Western Isles. Reading the article in the Edwardian English was fun enough but I found the story interesting. Clearly its was know what the quality of these three course Machrihanish, Machrie and Askernish were very highly rated and certainly Askernish . However the only consideration, which is still so apparent to this day is the getting there.
This for me is GCA, and certainly at its finest, courses that are at home with their environment yet offer the golfer a real game. I do believe we have much to learn from these three sites and I hope that other Architects will soon visit and understand what golf was about when it went worldwide, the past has most certainly something to pass on, the question will we modify these course to suite our modern trend or leave them and learn from them. That is down to the architects and designers to remember that all that’s new is not always good for the game.
I would like to thank Niall for his ‘ferreting’ and hope Ralph notes that Askernish was more than just known back in the 1903. Hope you all enjoy the article, lovers of Askernish and Golf I expect will love it for its language alone.
Melvyn
Golfing November 5, 1903
Longest Natural Links In The U.K.
Some Day Will Become Famous
They say in South Uist that one could Golf from the Sound of Barra to the South Ford on the finest and longest natural links in the United Kingdom (says a special correspondent of the Pall Mail). This would mean a course of 18 miles “out,” as the crow flies; and there is truth in the connection, for the whole west side of South Uist is “machar” land – land given over to bent grass, sand, and, old turf, the land of links.
At present, save for the fine course at Askernish, laid out by old Tom Morris, all this great stretch of golfing ground is in the possession of the wild geese and the rabbits. Someday, perhaps, it will be otherwise, and South Uist may become as famous as a golf resort as it now is as the chosen home of the sea-trout.
He writer can recall Machrihanish, not only in its early days as a golfing resort, when a modest inn offered the only accommodation, and the golf was confined to a few local enthusiasts, but when golf was quite unknown on the fine links, and the only attractions of Machrihanish were the “Pan,” cod, and the ferreting.
It is only since yesterday, as it were, that golf has been played in Islay, for when the writer lived in the most fertile of the Hebrides, in the eighties, a golf club was as rare a sight as a cricket bat. The rapid rise into popularity of Machrihanish and Machrie seems to point to the probability of Askernish one day rivalling these links in the esteem of the wandering Golfer.
The links themselves are, I certainly think, the finest natural links in the United Kingdom. Westwards there is the broad Atlantic; the surge and thunder of the ocean on a Western beach are ever in one’s ears.
And what a beach; There are miles and miles of surge beaten sand. Then the cloudscapes of the Isles are beyond compare, and change with every hour of the day. Eastwards there lies the weird, lake fretted land – a land of lone lochs, wild waste of moor, lit with strange lights that are half sea, half land-born, and fenced by the grey rampart of hills.
It is a land of far vistas, of weird and eerie beauty; a land of solitude and the silence of the lonely waste. The links themselves, to leave the poetic for the prosaic, are absolutely the ideal. They are sporting in the best sense, and are as nature made them. When nature does make a golf course she beats the best and most ingenious human architect. Here she has framed here masterpiece, and
someday, when the congestion of the mainland links increases, the golfing world will realise the fact and cross the Minch.
The crossing of the Minch is the rub.
Just as the Forth once “bridled the wild Highlandman” so the Minch may be said to guard South Uist from being overrun by Saxon sportsmen. Yet the Minch can be quite kind.
There are days on which the passage would not cause the worst of sailors a moment’s fear. Yet 'mare horrendum' is more often the rule. But winter passages are often better than those of summer, and winter is the season for golf in the Outer Isles.
Though the course of 18 holes is laid out, and there is a club and a small clubhouse, the links are still very much as nature made them. They receive none of that care which other links know. Hence winter is at present the time for pioneers who would be the first visitors to brave the Minch and taste of the joy of golfing on an island that differs from all other parts of the King’s domains, and offers the most complete change of scene and air of any part of the United Kingdom.
There is a very confortable hotel at Lochboisdale within four miles of the links, and the local players would give the warmest of Highland welcomes to the first party of golfers to relieve the monotony of their solitary rounds on the most westerly of British courses.
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