Nairn

Have just returned from an early round at Nairn.  Beautiful day with just the right amount of breeze to make it interesting.
In so far as the course itself is concerned, when we joined the club back in the mid-eighties, Nairn was absolutely magnificent.  Firm greens and firm approaches with rough you didn’t get lost in.  Unfortunately, the word spread and, in its vanity, the club accepted more and more big amateur events until it became pretty much an annual event to have one of these things.

The problem was it put so much pressure on the then greenkeeper to bring the course to perfection for one week in the year that the course itself changed at fundamental level.  In short, it had lost much of its ‘linksiness’ due to ever-increasing amounts of fertiliser being applied although I would point out this wouldn’t perhaps have been so obvious to the visitor as it was to those of us who remembered how it was.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the greenkeeper was under orders to narrow the fairways for these events and to add fertiliser to the rough!

With the advent of a new greenkeeper and no big events, measures have been taken to reduce the amount of organic matter being applied.  What a difference a couple of years can make.  So serious is the club in its efforts to bring the course back to how it should be that the course even closes for a few days in primetime August in order to carry out ongoing remedial work.

I would strongly recommend that if anyone here is planning to venture up to the Highlands for a golf trip, that they add Nairn to their itinerary.  The soft approaches which used to drive me nuts have gone and the greens are firm and fair and the whole place just looks stunning.

As it should be gael!
Perhaps a little personal pride in your message there?
Perhaps a wee bit of influence in the return to past glories??
Your mate Russell Knox opening the Valhalla batting in a few minutes.

Just don't go when they've just top dressed the greens like I did.

kwini, I have to admit, I've been one of the club's biggest whingers on this particular subject but it's taken an English Club Captain to put things back to the way they used to be! 

Still trying to muster some interest in the PGA.  Too soon after the last one.  I'm more interested in the cricket although the start has been delayed due to potential weather issues.

super_realist wrote:Just don't go when they've just top dressed the greens like I did.

Did you get a reduced green fee?

Bob_the_Job wrote:

super_realist wrote:Just don't go when they've just top dressed the greens like I did.

Did you get a reduced green fee?

No, but I was playing Dornoch the next day so didn't care all that much

gaelgowfer wrote:I'm more interested in the cricket although the start has been delayed due to potential weather issues.

India 63-5! You should tune in.

Timely post thanks. Seen there was an open in October at Nairn and its somewhere I have never played so thought about entering. Definitely will now I have seen your post.   

Really fine course. Stout wind, dead in my face on 18 - Driver, utility, utility (but 3 putted). On top of the course, great people and thoroughly enjoyed the clubhouse.

I thought it was a great track to be fair, even though i played it on a November morning in a sleety 3 club north easterly breeze. It was only after half an hour in my Inverness hotel room hot bath that I started to thaw out :-/

Played with a member off scratch who was seeing my daughter at the time so I had a good guide all the way round.

LadyPutt wrote:

gaelgowfer wrote:I'm more interested in the cricket although the start has been delayed due to potential weather issues.

India 63-5! You should tune in.

Hi there stranger.  Great show by England.  Some fantastic catches made.  Thoroughly entertaining.  Poor old Broad though.  So much for modern technology.  Methinks twill be back to a less streamlined helmet once his face has regained its shape!

Sand wrote:Timely post thanks. Seen there was an open in October at Nairn and its somewhere I have never played so thought about entering. Definitely will now I have seen your post.   

Sand, are you sure there's an Open competition?  Can't see one mentioned in my fixture list.  Perhaps it's Nairn Dunbar?  Unusual though for a club up here to have an open event in the month of October.

Shotrock wrote:Really fine course. Stout wind, dead in my face on 18 - Driver, utility, utility (but  3 putted). On top of the course, great people and thoroughly enjoyed the clubhouse.

Glad you enjoyed it Shotrock.  Shame you didn't play it in the prevailing wind though.  It's a tough old back nine into an east wind, speshully from the men's medal tees.  

JAS wrote:I thought it was a great track to be fair, even though i played it on a November morning in a sleety 3 club north easterly breeze. It was only after half an hour in my Inverness hotel room hot bath that I started to thaw out :-/

Played with a member off scratch who was seeing my daughter at the time so I had a good guide all the way round.

You must've played from winter tees (hopefully not winter greens though!).  Speaking of which, with the new dawning of an old era (firm greens with corresponding approaches), the 'resurrection' continues with the aid a graden machine (Ladyputt probably knows about such machines) but, I have to admit, it's new to me.  Apparently, it line-drills/scores??? the greens in order to excavate soil which is then immediately replaced with sand. 

Gael - Reason to go back ... and would be happy to do so. Lovely town as well.

Can't remember the tees Gael but it was definitely the proper greens and they were in extremely good nick for November, infact they were in extremely good nick period. Cant remember the guy's surname now but he was around scratch, both his mum and dad were members too.