As regular readers will be well aware the seeds of the Isle of Skye Golf Club were sown in 1964 when Sconser Golf Club was formed at a meeting held in Sligachan Hotel.
I was not present at the inaugural meeting but I know and I’m still in contact with a man,96yr old George Gibson who was!
I believe the venue for the meeting to have been convenient for those potential members from the south end of the island who intended to unite with those from Portree Golf Club to play their game on a parcel of land owned by Mr Ian Campbell, Sconser and assessed by Dr Frank Deighton, the eventual course designer to be fit for the purpose of playing golf.

Mr Campbell had very kindly offered the 55 acre site to be laid out as a golf course and this new sports club would be situated in a geographical location more suited to the needs of all of those who would play their game on the Isle of Skye.

IOSGC@60 celebrations will feature strongly in this season’s reporting with a number of competitions and special events having been created to mark the occasion.
The club would like to express its gratitude to the manager and staff at MacLeod and MacCallum, Portree for agreeing to sponsor this anniversary year.
However let us pause briefly to consider that the first of this season’s articles gets off to a rather unfortunate and stuttering start mainly because of this extended spell of truly appalling weather.
To date 2024 seems to have been a period of unremitting cold, wind and rain and as one who visits the course at Sconser an average of three times per week I have regularly returned home wet, cold and somewhat disillusioned.
The procedure thereafter is repetitive in the extreme as I remove the protective ZootSuit, soaking wet beanie and golf shoes from the obligatory black bin liner before laying them out to dry-then two days later starting all over again.
Indeed the traditional season-opening ceremonial competition of Captain v Vice Captain was abandoned three days before it was even due to take place so foul were the weather conditions and prospects for play.
However for a very few hours on the second day of the second weekend of the competitive season the weather eventually relented to allow a few battle-hardened golfing veterans from the Winter League the opportunity to take to the links in pursuit of their weekly golfing fix.

The competition in question was the Anniversary Quaich and in Category One Geoff Williams was the winner by one single stroke from John Finlayson while Willie Urquhart took the honours in Category Two.

Ha ha some might scoff-there was only one guy playing in the second section which is indeed correct but Willie’s nett score of 64 was a full eight shots clear of Geoff's so it looks like the Free Press snapper’s game is in rude health early in the season.
Welcome news then as apparently the bold Willie is hurtling at breakneck speed towards a birthday of some significance!

Fair play to messrs Williams, Urquhart and Finlayson who are among the very most regular of our golfing customers at the Sconser home of the Isle of Skye Golf Club.
A few days later and another wee weather window eased open briefly to allow a few of our senior golfers the opportunity to mark a midweek scorecard-or register their score electronically-but the former might be more familiar to these (well)over 55’s?

Ally Young’s 33pts got the better of his playing companion for the day Jim Cumming by the margin of one single point and a good time was had by the others too.


1964-First Movement
In the year of Sconser Golf Club's formation I was in S3 at school in a land far away to the south. There I commenced a course of study that was to dominate and fulfil my life but it was not golf-it was to be music.
My studies included the form and structure of the classical symphony and I will use that to illustrate the importance and significance of the four Major golf championships of the world(LIV excluded for the foreseeable future anyway) one of which,the Masters was played to a conclusion just last week.
Throughout the golfing world the Masters on tv is taken to be the harbinger of spring and consequently the golfing season. Time then for the fair-weather gowfers throughout the land to begin searching the house and outbuildings for the golf sticks which for the majority of them will most likely have lain in the dark gathering stoor for the last several months.
In compiling these weekly rambles it gives one great pleasure to meet and discuss with friends, non-golfing neighbours and assorted Portree residents who read and hopefully enjoy my stories-and yet they have never hit a golf ball in their lives.

Indeed many of these non-golfers will also have activated their tv sets to follow the first of the four Major championships played between April and July.
The Masters is always played in the fourth month of the year followed by the PGA Championship in May. The US Open is now scheduled for June before the oldest, biggest and grandest daddy of them all, our very own Open Championship-nb. NOT the British Open as some would attest-brings down the curtain for the Major season in July.

Returning to the symphonic structure then it, like Major golf events is in four sections or movements. Quite often the first and most substantial movement is preceded by a slow introduction very much along the lines of Sconser’s stuttering, weather-ravaged start to 2024 before the weightier material of the music and the golfing season commences.

The Masters is mighty, hugely historical and very traditional because unlike the other three championships it is always played at the same venue in Augusta, Georgia.
Depending on your geographical location in the world it vies with the Open Championship for the title of ‘most prestigious golfing Major’ but given that we in Scotland can trace the roots of our Open back to 1860 while the US-based bairn only began in 1934 I think the argument to be more than slightly weighted in our favour?
Like the symphony whose two outer movements will contain more substantive material so the gravitas of the Masters and the Open Championship fulfil that role in the season of golfing Majors.
The second and third movements are shorter and lighter-a wee bit like the PGA Championship and the US Open though our transatlantic cousins might beg to differ?

1984-Second Movement
This was the first of the four times that I was honoured to have been elected as captain of HMS Sconser. One of my first duties on behalf of the club was to finalise the deal to purchase the land on which our course is built. That transaction ensured that unlike many bigger and indeed grander golf clubs throughout the land our future was to be entirely in our own hands.
We at Sconser are beholding to no one and to no thing.

A fence was subsequently erected around our proud new possession and we were stock-proof for the first time ever-no more sheeps or coos!

2004-Third Movement
During the recent winter you may recall an article and photograph about long-serving committee man and latterly chief club steward George Neill being made an Honorary Member of the golf club?
In addition to the numerous other voluntary tasks he undertook on behalf of the club and the committee-posts he filled with distinction-he was elected to be Club Captain in 2004.

2024-Fourth Movement
A wee bit like the Tartan Army's ‘doh-a-deer’ parody-anthem we’re at long last some might say back to the future and the bottom note of the major diatonic scale.
Who knows what this year will bring but there’s lots more club information coming your way in these pages with hopefully more actual competition material on which to report.

Many thanks to Keith and Willie at the WHFP for allowing and indeed encouraging the club to use this space to report on the game of golf as it is played here in Skye and Lochalsh.
Thank you for reading.

RESULTS

Anniversary Quaich
Cat. One (0-12)
1 G Williams 80(8) nett 72; 2) J Finlayson 84(11) 73.

Cat. Two (13+)
1 W Urquhart 80(16) nett 64.

Storr Cup
1) A Young 33pts; 2) J Cumming 32pts.

COMPETITIONS
This weekend’s competition is a Better Ball Pairs Competition with entry open to both gentlemen and ladies.
For those who have missed the midweek competitions the Strath Cup returns on Wednesday. This is the first of five rounds where the best four from five possible scores will win the trophy come season’s end.

Please make the effort to support the very welcome return of this midweek fixture boys-use it or lose it?

JOHN MARSHALL

Club Championship sponsors 2024

Isle of Skye Golf Club are delighted to announce their new Club Championship sponsors as Torabhaig Distillery based at Teangue on Isle of Skye. This will cover the Ladies and Gents Championship for their Anniversary 60th year event marking golf played at Sconser. The game has been played at the Sconser location since 1964 since the origins of Sconser Golf Club and several events are in place to mark the Anniversary year.

At Torabhaig, we are pleased to support the Isle of Skye Golf Club Championship in celebration of the 60th Anniversary events. With the release of our third expression of the Legacy Series, Cnoc na Moine, we continue to explore the elegant side of peat smoke in our whiskies, made at Torabhaig and shaped by Skye.



Torabhaig Distillery is the second ever licensed Single Malt Scotch Whisky distillery on the Isle of Skye. The water, the land, the climate, all play a part in the character of the whisky produced which has been captured by Torabhaig. Isle of Skye Golf Club is proud to be associated with the Skye distillery and to be part of such a local, vibrant produce. Torabhaig Distillery are producing their own distinctive character whiskies which are evolving into a distinct signature style from a flavour profile known from what they call 'Well-Tempered Peat'.

Capt Robert MacAskill said 'It is a great opportunity for the Club to be associated with Torabhaig and to be part of their 'Legacy' portfolio'. We look forward to combining with Torabhaig and thank them for their generosity'