A SHORT HISTORY

Although golf has been played in Scotland from at least as early as the fifteenth century, there is no record of golf at Edzell until 1887, when an Edzell Golf Club playing over Edzell Muir was instituted. This was a time when holidaying and playing games were becoming popular with the workers, and railways and hotels were being built to facilitate participation in these, and Edzell village was developing to accommodate them. For the golfer, or would-be-golfer, of course, the introduction of the guttie ball, affordable by those who could not rise to the price of a featherie, was no doubt one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the game. Indeed it was this invention which was one of the main reasons for the development of a golf course in Edzell other than on public land. The good folk walking on the Muir were not too bothered by being struck by a ball stuffed with feathers, but to be hit with a solid lump of gutta percha was an altogether different matter. So things started to move and they moved very quickly indeed.

A meeting was held on 17th October, 1895, for gentlemen interested in the acquisition of a new golf course for Edzell, and a mere five months later, on 21st March, 1896, the course was opened for play on its present site. The land was leased from the Earl of Dalhousie at a rent of £50 per annum and Bob Simpson of the well-known Carnoustie golfing family and one of the leading course architects of the day was engaged to design the course and to oversee its construction. Bob designed courses all over Scotland, including most notably Balgownie for Royal Aberdeen Golf Club, Ferntower at Crieff and Alyth Golf Club, but Edzell was truly the “diamond in his diadem”.

The seal was set on the new golf club with the professional golf tournament held here in 1902. Suffice it to say that James Braid, Harry Vardon and Sandy Herd made it through to the semi-finals, with the top Frenchman, Arnaud Massey, also taking part.

From its inception the Club had used the local hotels for changing and meeting rooms until 1925, when the members left the billiards room of the Glenesk Hotel for the last time to take up occupancy of the new Clubhouse, which is still in use, although subsequently extended and modernised.

The passage of time and the siting of the new clubhouse led to a reappraisal of the course as originally laid out by Bob Simpson, and by 1933 the course had assumed more or less the shape it now has. In the meantime the Club had taken advantage of James Braid’s visit to play in the 1933 Open at St. Andrews to invite him over to visit the course and to advise on possible alterations. This he did and, whilst most of his suggestions were adopted, his proposals to fairly dramatically change the last three holes are still the subject of lively debate amongst the members.

The next major development was the purchase of the course and greenkeepers house from Dalhousie Estates in 1983 for £137,383, a sum which was repaid in three years through members’ loans and without any bank or other borrowing.

Since then the clubhouse has been further extended and improved, a new professional’s shop built, new accommodation for greenkeeping equipment and greenkeepers provided and, most recently of all, with the purchase of additional land from Dalhousie Estates, the development of extensive driving range and practice facilities, all with a bijou nine-hole golf course on the same site.

The Centenary of the Golf Club was marked in 1995 by the publication by the Club of a history of the Club to that date by I. A. N. Henderson entitled Edzell Golf Club, The First Hundred Years, in association with John Donald Publishers Ltd., Edinburgh.

In 2002 a complete review of the course and the clubhouse was carried out and led to a major course development plan being introduced in that year. This plan will update the main course and counteract recent developments in course design and golf technology. It is interesting to note that the original plan envisaged the same changes to holes 16, 17 and 18 that James Braid recommended in 1933. However, once again these changes were considered too drastic at this stage.