History Of Strathtay Golf Club - pt IV
All over Scotland, in conditions of postwar austerity, golf courses struggled to get themselves into shape again. In these years a generation of youngsters took up golf in conditions which closely resembled the earliest state of Strathtay Golf Course. I still remember the two municipal courses in the south of Glasgow where I started playing. You came to the course in hope - hope that the fairways had been cut fairly recently, and were less than ankle deep in grass; hope that not too many sheep had found their way through the wire on to the greens; hope that you did not lose a precious golf ball in the horrendous rough, or even that you might find one to augment your meagre supply - even a rubbery old Kro-Flite. Naturally some courses re-established themselves sooner and more completely than others. Strathtay was at the same disadvantage here as it had been since its inception in 1909 - a relatively static and small population to supply a membership, a limited number of visitors to contribute green fees. It is very much the kind of place that has to be discovered. Nobody is going to beat a path to play on an obscure little 9-holer (if they could work out on a map exactly where it is: Strathtay village itself often does not figure); its clubhouse is a single-storey wooden hut, with no catering facilities and no permanent attendant. To this day visitors deposit their green fees payments into an "honesty box" fixed to the wall, a transaction that often affords much amusement. We are told - as if we didn't know it - that this process is open to alt kinds of cheating; but in fact we always collect enough this way to meet our projections for green fees, and the point is that we are simply not busy enough to justify the wages of someone to sell tickets and count heads. In these circumstances, the general condition of our course rather lagged behind the improvements taking place in other parts of Scotland, or even - as we could not help noticing - in our immediate neighbours, Aberfeldy, Dunkeld, Blair Atholl. Indeed, as the twentieth century went on into the 1970s, 1980s and beyond, Strathtay became a kind of throwback, a curious example of what golf used to be like in times before courses had professional staff to look after them, watering systems which kept the greens green, clubhouses which had bars, restaurants, luxurious locker rooms with showers, and so forth.
None of this should imply that the committees over the second half of the twentieth century were neglectful or careless of the club's situation or its interests. They were constrained by the club's modest income, and were unwilling to exceed it in efforts to pursue expensive improvements that would rival those going on elsewhere. Besides, the village of Strathtay itself was in something of a timewarp. It was not until the late 1990's that a mains water supply could be laid on to its houses: no hurry north of Dunkeld, as we sometimes say. The club was not sunk in complacency, and did what it could as funds slowly built up. The notorious marsh on the fourth hole was drained. If the new fairway was inclined to be damp underfoot, it at least afforded a safe haven for an underhit drive which made a second shot to the green possible. The very narrow first three fairways, which made their way around a vast triangle of waist-high hay, were broadened; and this part of the course now has no rough on the right at all (although there is plenty of trouble on the left). Some greens in terminally poor condition were rebuilt, at the second, fourth, sixth and seventh holes. The clubhouse was smartened up: a good coat of paint, carpeting, toilets in both changing rooms. The committee felt it could not afford the services of a professional greenkeeper, but this operation came to devolve solely on the efforts of one member who accepted such payment as the finances allowed. With regular experience of the task, he built up an expertise which kept the course in perfectly acceptable order - such as it was. Some long-term deficiencies in it remained. The tees were ludicrously small, in some cases with room only for the one player to make his shot; several of them had a surface which listed to one side or another, and more than one did not point accurately in the direction that the shot ought to take. Members came to terms with this and could adjust their play accordingly, but those unfamiliar with the problem sometimes remarked that it was an idiosyncracy they could do without. Certain fairways had their regular squelchy patches after a rainfall. Although standpipes were installed at most greens, allowing a rudimentary watering system with sprinklers shuttled around them in turn, this arrangement did not extend to the first two greens, which continued to dry up badly in hot weather. The greens were never much better than acceptable, and those who played regularly over Strathtay found that putting on other courses was a source of both envy and embarrassment. We could never get the hang of fast, well-manicured greens, and our opponents in inter-club matches used to mock us, more or less kindly, as we sent putts eight feet past the hole on their first green - an absurd lapse which they liked to term 'a Strathtay putt'.
It would not do to be derogatory about our 9wn wee course, or to seem to belittle the efforts of those who worked faithfully to maintain it as best they could over those years when other local courses - with much bigger memberships and higher fees -surpassed Strathtay in various ways, even by extending from 9 to 18 holes. The fact is that, with all its supposed imperfections, it survived. Small, as they say, is beautiful: a course with low overheads and modest ambitions is comparatively inexpensive to run, and with only just enough members and just enough summer visitors, Strathtay always seemed to manage to make ends meet. And if, unkindly but with some justice, it could be described as quaint or old-fashioned, an unreconstructed relic of golf as it used to be, this actually proved an advantage. It gave Strathtay a niche in an increasingly competitive golf market. Visitors were fascinated, or even delighted, with what (in an age when so many clubs were frantically "upgrading" themselves in order to look and play like every other golf course) our place offered in the way of golfing challenge. You can't, except at the deceptively easy first hole, expect to stand on the tee and thrash a drive as far as you can down a broad inviting fairway. You can't, as a rule, play a high, floating approach into the heart of a big receptive green. Our fairways make their tight way along the undulations of Captain Steuart's old estate grazings, and a shot from the tee calls for accuracy rather than power to set up the best line to the green. The greens are small and the surfaces are firm. As often as not you need a lower flight of approach - a bump-and-run, using the slope above or in front of the green to slow the ball and let it trickle on. Strathtay puts a premium on imagination in shot-making. It's a short enough course for virtually every hole to be a potential birdie for the accomplished golfer; but every hole has its built-in hazard that also makes it a disaster waiting to happen. And so we found visitors expressing an appreciation for what we ourselves sometimes regarded as defects. They enjoyed a course that made them play a variety of shots unknown or unnecessary on bigger, blander courses. They even liked our little wooden clubhouse which provided changing-rooms, toilets, and precious little else, but where they could sit outside on the patio and eat a picnic lunch at the tables we set out on it. If they came from urban areas, as they often did, they greatly enjoyed seeing what local members rather took for granted: pheasants, partridges, red squirrels, the occasional glimpse of roe deer, or the aerial display of our resident family of buzzards. The course is host to a variety of attractive wild flowers which appear in season - primroses, bluebells, orchises, ragged Robin, and all kinds of little flowering heathland plants. You don't need to know their names to admire their beauty. And of course, since the place is seldom all that busy, families with children can have a round together, or absolute beginners can take up the game and learn to play - a rare privilege that is usually unavailable, or frowned upon, at most clubs.