I have largely tried to avoid hanging out with smart people my entire life. That’s one reason why I began this Discussion Group some fourteen years ago.
However, from time to time I find myself hopelessly embroiled in a conversation with a person who brings far more ammo to the discussion. Such occurred at Harlech where Richard Fisher schooled me on W.H. Auden's essay about the seventeenth-century devotional poet George Herbert, whom Auden regarded as having made the critical transformation from Great Minor Poet to Minor Great Poet during the twentieth century. Richard with great grace and dignity – and speaking slowly so that I could keep up – used Auden’s thoughts as an analogy for golf links, some being great but minor and others minor but great. Richard professed, “It's something indefinable to do with scale, challenge, heft, ambience.” His point was brilliant and it made my head spin a bit, freshly reminding me to avoid such intellects on a go-forward basis.
I have shamelessly lifted Richard’s observations and applied them to the intro for the Fraserburgh profile. The first question a reader will likely ask is ‘Where is Fraserburgh? I have never heard of it.” Those were my sentiments when I first came across it. Everybody’s favorite transplanted Aussie, Benny Hillard now working on Cape Breton Island, introduced me to these links. When he was visiting GolfClubAtlas.com world international headquarters, my daughter walked into the room after a fun color run (essentially, she was covered in paint). Benny, demonstrating his keen eye for observation, said “Ran, you didn’t tell me your daughter was a smurf!”
Later, I twisted his arm to send me his personal top 50 courses in the hopes of finding a hidden gem or two and voila, there Fraserburgh was! Given how rock solid his other 49 courses were, there was no way Fraserburgh could have been a miss. Coupled with its occasional mention in this Discussion Group and based on chats with Joe Andriole, it got high on my explore list.
Located some thirty minutes north of Cruden Bay, it is out of the way as the crow flies from Inverness to Aberdeen/Cruden Bay. Hence, for too many decades, motorists have forsaken this place in order to get to their next course faster. Mistake! The last time I saw a course of this magnitude that flew under the radar was Siloth-on-Solway. Upon my return, and after a week of cooling off, I remain dumbfounded about how good it is and why the “Darwins” of the world haven’t better chronicled its presence.
Benny rode to the rescue again by introducing me to Gordon Moir, Director of Greenkeeping for the St. Andrews Links Trust. Gordon started work at Fraserburgh as a fresh-faced youth in 1976. Early on he saw one round of major changes take place and later personally performed work that significantly improved several holes, especially 11, 12, and 14.
The evolution of the course from Braid’s early work to today’s links is discussed in the profile with Moir’s input serving as background for the transformational work that has occurred there since WWII. No need to repeat it here except to say that today’s gem has been in its full glory for less than 30 years. That helps explain a
little why more people haven’t beat a path to its door.
For most of us, everything we want in a links can be found here AND there are mercifully few slow playing, gibbering foreigners. The photographs tell the story – this is real deal linksland and a real deal links. Don’t miss it.
Best,