Some Scottish golf courses are in danger of disappearing into the sea, due to climate change, according to those trying desperately to save them. Recent storms and rising sea levels are forcing some to “crowd-fund” in order to build ever higher coastal defences. Links courses on the east coast have been particularly affected.
If you have not seen these “Links” courses in person, or read about them in detail, you may not know that they are basically built on sand dunes alongside the sea. The first nine holes often share the same greens as the back nine, meaning the whole course is very narrow. Thus, any erosion affects the whole course, not just some holes.
Fortrose Golf Club has already started to protect the first and second tees, which sit precariously close to the lapping waves of the North Sea. The course, located on the Black Isle, near Inverness, lost huge chunks of fairway when Storm Babet struck in October 2023. Golf has been played on the peninsula since 1702 but there are fears it might not last another 50 years. “We’ve lost about six metres (19.7ft) of ground due to the recent storms,” said club chairman Douglas Simpson. “This is a championship golf course, it’s a major attraction. We have members from all across the world and we have to protect it. Dog walkers and dolphin-spotters have recently been dodging diggers and dumper trucks along the beach, as huge boulder walls are built to protect the course. More than £100,000 has been spent in recent weeks but much more is needed if the course is not to disappear completely. I want my kids and grandkids to come here and enjoy it but I’m fearful for it,” Mr. Simpson said.
Former chairman of the Montrose Golf Club, which boasts the fifth oldest golf course in the world, fears it is only a matter of time before the dunes that it sits on are washed away. “It was envisaged we’d lose maybe one metre, maybe 1.5 metres, per year, but we’ve just lost seven metres in one year,” he said. “If we lose another seven metres, that’s half of the fairway. In a decade, the course will be gone completely. An allocation of about £500,000 has been made for defences this year but the local council has advised the course to start what they call a “managed retreat”.
Investigations carried out in 2021 found that 109 golf courses in Scotland are suffering the effects of coastal erosion.
Martin Hurst, from the University of Glasgow, has been studying the changing coastline and understands the threat rising sea levels are posing to the game Scotland gave to the world.
He points to Montrose as a good example. “If the current worst-case scenario with rising sea levels is realised, we’re expecting something like 85 metres (279ft) of erosion there by 2050. If that was to happen, the golf course would no longer exist, and the managed retreat would become a forced surrender to the sea.”
Fears then turn to the town itself and other towns like it. “Around all of Scotland, we think that about £1.2bn of assets are at risk near the coast,” Mr. Hurst said. “That’s infrastructure, but also local communities that live near the coast, so we need to take these threats seriously and think how best we can adapt, mitigate and manage, moving forward.”
In 2020, world golf body, The R&A, commissioned a report to look at the effects of climate change on the sport. They produced the “Coastal Change Action Plan”. The plan was based on a study, established in 2018 as an industry initiative, to consider the impact of the changing climate, resource constraints and regulation on golf course conditions and playability.
The on-going study will also look at opportunities for blue carbon – the term for carbon captured by the world’s ocean and coastal ecosystems – and the role of its long-term storage in Scotland’s shoreline habitats surrounding golf courses.
Scientists believe protecting these environments could reduce greenhouse gases that would otherwise contribute to global warming.
The findings of the report are due sometime this year.
So, if you want to play Scotland’s links courses in your lifetime, you might want to move your planning up a bit.
