One for Golf aficionados in Argyll and elsewhere – yesterday one ball sport helped another’s latest development into being. Kenny Dalglish, Scottish footballing icon, opened the restored Old Tom Morris links course at Askernish Golf Club on South Uist and accepted the Club’s invitation to become its Honorary President.

The course is now seen as potentially one of the best links courses in the world. It’s rediscovery and restoration is a story all its own. It was designed one hundred and seventeen years ago by the internationally revered course designer, Old Tom Morris. This has already attracted one hundred members to the club from the UK and abroad – from Sweden, Canada and the USA. It is estimated that the course will soon attract around five thousand visitors a year, growing to ten thousand in four years time and, by 2012, generating around £1 million per annum for the South Uist economy.

The course has lived many lives. in several different guises. It fell into disuse and became part of crofting land. It was an airstrip. Part of it was translated into a twelve-hole course before shrinking to a longer incarnation as a nine-hole one.

Its restoration began in 2005 after a Golf consultant, Gordon Irvine who had heard that sich a course might have existed, managed to unearth it during a holiday. It cost only £50,000 because Mr Irvine’s team, including Martin Ebert, a golf architect, contribute their work for nothing. Yesterday’s opening was a beacon of hope for the future in South Uist. The course is a massive community asset and one which will support it indefinitely into the future. It’s not entirely clear of the bunker yet, though. A group of crofters have taken a case to the Scottish Land Court, arguing that valuabe grazing has been lost to a development they never consented to having.

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