Isle of Harris Golf Club was a real treat
I enjoy Love Golf and reading about your favourite golf courses.
HELLO Mike,
I enjoy Love Golf in the EADT and Ipswich Star and reading about your favourite golf courses.
Although sharing neither my wife’s passion nor ability for golf, I do enjoy an occasional game and have played a number of courses outside of Suffolk.
My favourite has to be Scarista, home to the Isle of Harris Golf Club in the Outer Hebrides. Set up in 1930 this nine-hole links course is just 4,864 yards long (par 68) and its challenges match its natural beauty clinging, as it does in places, to the side of a rocky outcrop which falls steeply down to the Atlantic Ocean, while in other parts the course runs gently down to the Scarista beach.
The sandy nature of the course, combined with the extremes of Hebridean weather also appear to make greenkeeping difficult – while we were once playing the course greens were being sprayed with green paint to hide the bare sandy surface!
Some years ago Nick Faldo played the course, unannounced, and signed the �5 note, which at the time was the visitors’ green fee, before putting his payment into the honesty box. This �5 note was subsequently framed and every year since, members play for ‘The Faldo Fiver’.
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As I have said, I am no serious golfer but Scarista is a must visit when on the Isle of Harris/Lewis, which can be reached by flying to Stornaway or via ferries from Ullapool or Uig on the Isle of Skye.
PETER BLEMINGS
HAVE you a favourite course, a ‘must visit’? Let me know about it.
E-mail: mike.bacon@archant.co.uk. Or write to me: Mike Bacon, Love Golf, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich IP4 1AN.
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