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Alyth
Early days of Alyth Golf Club
© 2000, Douglas MacKenzie - All rights reserved |
Alyth was instituted as a club on 21 August 1894 at a meeting at Alyth Town Hall following a preliminary meeting a fortnight earlier at the Airlie Arms. 51 gentlemen and 17 ladies indicated announced their intentions to join.
Old Tom Morris was contracted to sketch a design for a 9-hole course and, unlike modern course development , the course was ready and opened on 19 September with a foursome between J Guthrie Orchar, Provost of Dundee, and Old Tom, versus Rev J R McLaren, who had initiated the formation of the club, and Rev Dr Gordon McPherson of Ruthven, the club’s first captain. State defeated church by one hole.
This course was short-lived, because of problems with the lease familiar to most clubs of the period, and in the spring of 1896, the club, after much difficulty, procured a tract of moorland for a course and were able to open the course and ‘a handsome new pavilion in June of the same year’. The funds for the pavilion were raised as was common by a bazaar (see the articles on Carnoustie and Monifieth).
One suspects there was a problem in those early days with numbers locally: the first fund-raising dance had to be postponed due to lack of interest and took place only when admission prices were dropped and ladies admitted for free. Visitors were welcome, ‘Summer visitors are admitted to the privileges of the course on the following terms: Gentlemen six months 10s 6d; three months 7s 6d; one month 5s; two weeks and under 2s 6d. Ladies and young gentlemen visiting the district half these terms.’ and in 1897 it was decided that “working men and others” would be allowed to play the course but not be admitted to the clubhouse.
Whether this all still failed to bring the necessary numbers to the course or there was simply not enough spent on maintenance is not clear but in 1903 there was mutiny. The state of the greens was the main complaint and the committee agreed in April of that year to resign en masse and hand over to new management. The familiar arguments with tenant farmers continued: excessive rents (in the club’s eyes) and restrictions on winter play over the ground. However, more land was provided at a peppercorn rent by Sir John Ogilvy Wedderburn in 1924 and, with this, the course became 13 holes in 1928. In 1934 the course finally became 18 holes. Unlike the early quick “sketch and go” of Old Tom Morris, James Braid’s design required the removal of seven tons of stone and much drainage of the land.
(Sources include Peter Baxter, Golf in Perth and Perthshire, (1899) and Alyth Golf Club's own webiste at http://www.alythgolfclub.co.uk)
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Alyth Golf Club
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