Standing on the sixth tee at Fort Augustus, looking at a very narrow fairway, a smell like sage in the air, and with brush and bracken and gorse virtually encircling me, a boat suddenly sailed past me, very close at hand. Now, I have been golfing a long time and I have been golfing a long time on inland courses. I have never had a boat sail past me while golfing an inland course. I heard music—carnival music—coming from the direction of the boat. Boat? Carnival music? Had I become a bit barmy from all the travel?
I climbed the small mound to my left and there was a canal, set deep among the mountains. I would soon learn, thanks to a considerable piece of luck, how the Caledonian Canal tied to the history of the Fort Augustus course and, in fact, to world history.
I had awakened that day to the east of Inverness, in an old farmhouse, now a bed and breakfast. My host had made breakfast and, as I knew from being in Scotland years before, it was a right proper Scottish breakfast. For my friends in the States and all the ships at sea, this is what a right proper Scottish breakfast consists of (not everyone serves exactly the same thing, but you’ll get the picture):
Eggs
Tattie Scones
Square Sausage
Bacon
Link Sausage
Sliced Haggis
Toast
Grilled/Fried tomatoes
Baked Beans
Black Pudding
Mushrooms
In the States, you would simply pick up the phone to your cardiologist and tell them you would be in as soon as you finish breakfast.
Properly fortified, I had sallied forth for another nine-holer, Fort Augustus, reputed to be the toughest wee course in Scotland. It turned out that I would first head directly into thirteen consecutive roundabouts, in rush hour, beneath Inverness, and, as quoted from “must-see-Scotland” (https://www.must-see-scotland.com/driving-in-scotland) “roundabout discipline in the Highland Capital is pretty poor, as a rule. Don’t know why. But, again, we drive there a lot and it’s not relaxing.” How was I to know? Half-an-hour of high-speed rush-hour traffic around Inverness’s roundabouts provided enough adrenaline to hold me the rest of the day—probably added twenty yards to my drives. And then down the A82, which “must see” calls the most dangerous route in Scotland. Let me explain this: it is a narrow two-lane road, filled with endless potholes as well as endless lorries and endless tourist buses hanging over the center line, giving you the choice to scrape the side of the road, or hit the multi-ton vehicle that is two feet in your lane, or wait to the last moment and yank your car left into Loch Ness. The sheer fear added still another five yards to my drives, at the least.
I drove through Fort Augustus—a lovely tourist town—and then right past the course sign. After making a sliding 240-degree turn into a small country lane, I turned around and missed the entrance once again.
Turned around once more in the middle of Fort August. Finally, (remember this is my third attempt) located said sign and turned down a road large enough for three donkeys to stand side-by-side . . . maybe. A woman, in fact, was walking her large dogs, side-by-side, up that road and I waited as she fought to control them. I suspect that each dog weighed, well, about half the weight of the average donkey and I had visions of them dragging her beneath my wheels.
(I would later, on this pilgrimage, go down roads that would make these look like the Washington Beltway or the Autobahn near Berlin. We will get there.)
When you drive onto the Fort Augustus course, you may not know you are driving onto what might be called one of the premiere courses in the world. It was designed by Harry Shapland Colt.
Designing courses on six different continents, Harry Colt has a considerable claim to being the greatest golf architect of the first generation of professional golf architects—no insult meant to James Braid, by the way. He was the first golf architect to use a drafting board. He was inventor of the dogleg, the modern contoured green, the shape of the modern bunker and the modern bunker complex. Colt’s views were very straightforward:
“The designer of a course should start off on his work in a sympathetic frame of mind for the weak, and at the same time be as severe as he likes with the first-class player.”
“I firmly believe that the only means whereby an attractive piece of ground can be turned into a satisfying golf course is to work to the natural features of the site in question.”
No aspect of Colt’s courses can be described as “penal”—unless, of course, golfers make it that way through their own greediness or foolishness. On this subject he was very clear: good golfers, he believed, should have the opportunity to take risks, to hit good shots that would give them the chance, but not the promise, of better scores; lesser golfers should have safer routes to play the same holes so that they could choose to give up a stroke on this or that hole and yet not risk giving up three or four or five strokes. Moreover, he felt that first holes should be relatively easy and that, if you survived the tee shots and fairways, the greens should give even lesser golfers a reasonable chance to get home in two. Greens should not, he advocated, be a hazard in and of themselves. They also should not be so simple as to take the challenge completely out of putting. Fairways should be narrow and force those trying for low scores to take risks in exchange for yardage, but not so narrow as to force lesser players into hopelessness. In short, he was a Victorian gentleman late in the Victorian era, he thought that golf courses should definitely be in harmony with nature, and that they should be humane but testing. In some ways, his courses reflected his dedication to the best Christian principles.
Oddly enough, although Colt was a man whose eighteen-hole courses gained prominence on six continents, he accepted a plea to build a nine-hole course for Fort Augustus. He put in some of his best work on a tiny heathland course that only locals would play. And this is where the Fort Augustus course intersects world history. Before World War I, the town had had a small course. But the World War I defense of the Loch Ness area and the Caledonian Canal required that that course be obliterated. This left the locals with far too much time on their hands and, after the war, a local Benedictine monastery pulled a few oars with the church hierarchy to make a new golf course happen. Now Colt had designed or redesigned great courses—his list includes Muirfield, Royal Liverpool, and Pine Valley—and those who were in the know, knew of his eminence. Somehow, the English leadership of the Catholic Church convinced Colt to design a new course and to send his construction superintendent to make certain it was done right.
At cost.
Colt’s superintendent stripped an area, laden with rocks, that had been set aside for the course. Having seen pictures of the land before construction started, I can testify that there were about enough rocks there to build a new island of Britain. Colt’s design was ingenious to say the least. He turned the land, crisscrossed with ravines and punctuated by sinkholes, into a striking heathland course. And he did so in an area smaller than the fairgrounds for a county fair in the United States. A hacker can stand on hole six and easily hit a pitching wedge over a sunken green (number five), a large sinkhole, and the hilltop that holds hole four’s green. (I haven’t tried to do so, by the way.)
After the trip in, and completely unaware of the nuances of a Colt course, I was ready to hit the ball. I crushed a drive down the right side of a relatively broad fairway—Colt said that first holes should be easier—and immediately learned two lessons:
Not all Scottish golf courses are the same—unlike the vast number of American courses which are variations on the same parkland design; AND
Heath don’t roll.
Had I hit that drive on linksland, I would have been well down the fairway. As it was, the drive was a long time in the air . . . and then it hit and, instead of rolling and rolling, it just died, no pulse at all. Instead of being a wedge from the green—which I expected while the ball was in the air—I was a seven-iron out. No problem, right? No, there was a problem. I was on the right side of the fairway, the green was elevated, the right side of the green was sand trapped and the trap was at the bottom of a steep decline.
I should have hit a six. The seven hit the collar and instead of bouncing forward, it just stopped and rolled backwards into the trap. Being a hacker, I realized the chances of me getting out and hitting a green far above my head were—how do I say this—zero. So, I went out sideways, put my fourth shot on the green, two-putted and left a wiser golfer. Two was a nice par five, very straightforward, just hit the fairway. Three was a short par four—very straightforward, just hit the fairway. Oh, and forget the driver. Just hit the fairways and hang on. I was not taking full swings but hitting punch shots and avoiding the (non-existent) rough. Four and five were fine par threes, which eased past a quarry or some type of sinkhole . . . just keep the head down and hit. Five holes in and my card was alright, not great, no pars . . . but I was avoiding disaster relentlessly.
And then I went to six. A long hole, narrow, longer than it appeared . . . and narrow (did I mention that already?). There is a landing area on the other side of a chute, and I hit a punch shot to it.
And then, full of my own glory, I hit a towering three wood—not the safe thing to do. It went long and straight and then it tailed to the right just a little bit, missed the non-existent rough, and went right into some low brush. It was a good shot. In the states, I would have been in the first cut. Here I was in trouble.
No problem. Pitching wedge, swing hard, just advance it a hundred yards.
Say what you want, there is nothing wimpy about Scottish brush. I thought I had broken my wrist. At least I almost got out of the rough. Still full of optimism, I grabbed a hybrid and tried to make up for the last shot. Well, I landed on the fairway at least. Eventually I reached the green and walked, chastened, to seven.
Seven’s a par three and who knows how long it actually is. You hit over a valley and, something I had never done in America, hit over a fence, to a green that I could not have reached as a thirty-year old. I hit part way up the far side of the valley, walked down and went through a gate in the fence—with all kinds of warnings to close the gate. Walked up to hit into the green and faced a new obstacle. You can read Hogan’s “Five Lessons” and Jack’s “Golf My Way” and not find a single darned reference as to how to hit over a cluster of sheep.
To miss them I hit long and ended up with an evil pitch back to the green . . . over the electronic fence that guarded the green from the sheep. (My autocorrect keeps changing “sheep” to “ship”—I guess Americans do not very often type the word “sheep.”)
Stepping over the electronic sheep-zapper, I two-putted and walked off the green, down the valley, through a different gate in the fence (being certain to close it) and to the eighth.
The eighth is a great Colt par four. It is not so much a dogleg left as a curve left, and the right place to hit your drive is to the right. But Colt liked risk-reward holes and you can take a line left that shortens the hole quite a bit. At 353 yards, the temptation is to go for it. Of course, if you do, you will find the approach from the left is not user-friendly at all. Right or left, your choice, which would make Colt smile.
Finally, nine is a nice simple and short par three which can almost make a person feel good about themselves again. Colt liked to take the pressure off on the final hole. I parred nine and started to walk past the clubhouse when one of the members, who was repairing some plumbing, hailed me and asked where I was from.
We chatted for a while and he took me around the small clubhouse and then showed me a letter about the building of the course from one Harry Shapland Colt, a name which meant nothing to me at that moment.
I love this article. Please make contact via my e mail as I am heavily involved oil trying to save a lost and rediscovered 1929 original Harry Colt course in the midlands. I am sure you will find the story of interest.