When Mike Keiser, the golf course developer, walked away from his Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw project at Coul on Scotland’s northeast coast after being refused planning permission, he was not inclined to try again. Instead, he handed things over to the locals, his feeling being that they would have a better chance than he did of getting the go-ahead from Scotland’s Highland Council. If the locals’ efforts worked, he promised to return.
Keiser probably was not wrong in wondering whether the council saw him as one more rich American planning a takeover of a rare stretch of Scottish linksland. After all, it was as recent as 2016 when Donald Trump suggested that all possible steps were being taken to protect the famous sand dunes on his Trump International venue in Aberdeen, only for the said dunes to be stripped of their special scientific status four years later.
The fact that Keiser, who created the Bandon Dunes Resort on Oregon’s coast, made his fortune by founding one of the first greeting-card companies to print on recycled paper should have been enough to convince anyone that he was unlikely to want to go down the Trump route. Furthermore, you have to like the sound of a man whose Coul Links project was born of his love of the area and an early visit to Royal Dornoch.
So much did the local golf fraternity on Sutherland’s northeast coast want another fine links to set alongside Dornoch and such other gems as Golspie, Tain and Brora that they did not take much convincing when Keiser asked them to get involved.
“If we can get permission for Coul Links and the eco-friendly hotel which will come with it, we feel that more people will come to our part of the world and stay in the area for longer.”
Andy Stewart, president of Brora Golf Club
They created a not-for-profit community-led company to launch their crowd-funding campaign, and already they have amassed £100,000 (about $105,500) of the £150,000 it will cost to fulfil the requirements on the council’s wish list.
There are almost too many reasons why Coul’s coastline means so much to so many. On the one hand, there is a strong faction of locals who worry about the disturbances which would be visited on both the wildlife and themselves by any new development; they would sooner be left in peace. On the other, you have the golfing population arguing that the relevant acreage adds up a God-given stretch of readymade linksland.
Andy Stewart, the president of Brora Golf Club and the man who is heading the crowdfunding campaign, explains how it makes sense for Coul and the already well-established area courses to band together. (Skibo Castle, incidentally, is also in the region but has to date preferred to remain a separate entity and stick with its combination of mystery and exclusivity.)
“What happens at the moment,” Stewart said, “is that people will come up to Sutherland to play a couple of rounds before retreating down south. If we can get permission for Coul Links and the eco-friendly hotel which will come with it, we feel that more people will come to our part of the world and stay in the area for longer. What with the jobs which would be created in the process, it would be a win-win situation, especially at a time when the migration of young people from East Sutherland is such a worry.”
Stewart, who works for the University of the Highlands and Islands, where he runs a golf-management degree course and a four-year honours programme for those who want to be professionals, thinks that his students would benefit no less than those looking for work in the hospitality industry. “The ‘golf’ students would grab all the caddying openings that are going to be available, for a start … It’s just the kind of work experience they need for their CVs in a country where one in every 125 jobs is dependent on golf.”
In accord with the council’s wishes, Stewart and his team are already making headway with detailed surveys regarding the local bird life, invertebrates and insects, etc., with the same level of attention going into such things as the planning of public access across the estate for walkers and cyclists.
That more and more of today’s golfers want their courses to be environmentally friendly suggests that Stewart and his team will revel in going the extra mile. Which is as it was at the Robert Trent Jones Sr. course at Vidauban in the Provence region of southeastern France, when the Vidauban Foundation for the Environment wanted the ongoing protection of the course to correspond with the expectations of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
At one point, Christine Fournil from the Vidauban Foundation, advised the golfers that she would like to introduce donkeys to the complex for the purpose of eating clippings from the rough and thereby reducing the risk of fire. She also pointed to how the donkeys would fertilise the area in a cheap and ecologically friendly way.
Not only did it work, but the members were soon viewing the baying arrivals as old friends.
No one is claiming that French donkeys could have a role at Coul. However, because so much of what Keiser and the Communities for Coul want is not so very different from the council’s requirements, you have to think that it might not be too long before the two sides are seeing eye to eye.
Top: Coul on Scotland’s northeast coast
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