Her budget did not stretch to hiring a talent like Mr. Morris to create one of Scotland’s earliest private golf courses.Įlsewhere, her upper-class peers followed suit: Lady Matheson, whose family held sway in Lewis, the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest of the islands, financed a course in its largest town, Stornoway. Lady Cathcart, for example, whose father-in-law had bought South Uist in the 1830s, hired Mr. That wealthy niche of Britons was among golf’s most avid proponents, and those who lived here commissioned courses to keep their guests entertained. Morris’s masterpiece back to playable perfection.

Irvine resolved at that moment to bring Mr. It had been built in 1891 and named Askernish, after the small settlement in which it sits. But as soon as he hiked to the dunes and looked out, he was stunned by what he saw: the well-preserved remnants of a world class, 18-hole course. Irvine assumed it must be folklore, or a hoax. He said he became curious when someone mentioned Tom Morris, the prolific 19th-century champion-turned-greenskeeper nicknamed the father of golf. “Someone said this famous old golfer had laid that one out, right on top of the old dune system nearby,” Mr. It was fine, if unremarkable, but then he heard that it was not the original site of the local golfing greens. Standing on the west coast of that island, he surveyed a nine-hole, par-3 course that had been carved out of the grass runways where mail planes had once landed.

Irvine was offered a simple barter: the locals on South Uist, the second-largest of the islands, would trade advice on how to restore it in exchange for trout fishing rights. On one of the islands, a community golf course was being rehabbed, and within a few years Mr.

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