Marcus Arkwright, an economics student at Edinburgh University, was playing the third hole at Edinburgh’s historic Braid Hills Golf Course on the evening of Thursday 1st May when he saw them tearing across the slopes. Two troublemakers wearing balaclavas and riding electric bikes.
When four more turned up, the unsavoury six started revving up their bikes before playing havoc with several of the greens on the famous council course where the late Tommy Armour, the so-called “Silver Scot,” learned his golf. And where the Dispatch Trophy, founded as long ago as 1890, will be played from 17-24 May. (Harry Vardon and James Braid – two major champions – were among the early winners.)
Arkwright, a 9-handicapper, took one look at the youths as they mounted the eighth green – it was some way below where he was – and decided at once that they weren’t the kind of lads to whom you could yell, “Do you mind not doing that?”
“They were intimidating to say the least,” he told GGP. “I was glad to be playing with a couple of friends.”
The greenkeepers, when they saw the extent of the damage at 7 o’clock the next morning, were at their wits’ end: “We were down to three members of our six-strong staff and we’d been working all hours to have the course ready for the Dispatch. And then we woke up to this,” said Gary Rodger, the head greenkeeper.
“For a few minutes, I just stood there holding my head and staring. So many things were going through my mind. Saturdays are always busy and I wondered what on earth our members were going to think about the furrows and twirls on the greens. The topography is perfect for these demons. There’s lots of raised tees and greens and, in the case of the greens, these kids get their thrills from racing up the slopes on the far side of the bunkers and flying down the 10 feet or more onto the putting surfaces. That’s when they switch to the ‘wheelies’ and the ‘donuts’ as they call them.”
“The trouble today is that youngsters have no respect for their elders and they get away with everything. In the last five to 10 years they’ve become more and more brazen.”
Gary Rodger
As it turned out, the members didn’t begin to make a fuss. “I got a letter from one of them on the Monday morning saying how well the staff had done to get the course in such good shape,” said Rodger. “It helped to lift our spirits.
“All of us greenkeepers love ‘the Braids’ and we get plenty of people saying how good it is. We’ve had a lot of support from other clubs in the area and it’s nice that people care.”
Rodger is not sure how the police will deal with the latest in crazy behaviour. All he knows is that if he had been involved in anything like it in his youth, his father would have given him “a clip around the ear.”
“The trouble today,” he continued, “is that youngsters have no respect for their elders and they get away with everything. In the last five to 10 years they’ve become more and more brazen.
“There’s got to be consequences when they ruin other people’s harmless fun and, if there aren’t, how much worse are things going to be 20 years from now?
“The teenagers who play their golf here are taught the etiquette of the game at the outset and what a difference that makes. They’re great kids.”
At the nearby Halfords cycling store, where you can buy anything from regular bikes to electric bikes, quad bikes and scooters, a member of staff said that in the last year alone he had noticed six thieves walk in the door and pick up a bike before exiting the premises. In keeping with the rules of the company, he hadn’t been able to give chase. And, no, he wasn’t the only one at the shop to have seen these offences in the making.
The same assistant drew my attention to how easy it is to knock out the speed restrictions attached to electric bikes: “They aren’t meant to go any faster than 15.5 mph but once they’ve put an electronic chip in the motor, they can go up to 30 mph and more. It’s terrifying for people when they go whizzing past.”
Now to list a few more U.K. golf courses to have been roughed up. Near London, Walton Heath is in much the same position as Braid Hills in that it, too, has a big event on the calendar. In their case, it is nothing less than Final Qualifying for the U.S. Open and is due to be played on 19th May.
The Walton Heath committee don’t want to draw too much more of the public’s attention to their problems but, as has been well documented in the last couple of weeks, they have been looking for more support from local politicians and law-enforcement officers.
Meanwhile, at Burslem Golf Club in Stoke-on-Trent, the so-and-sos went a full 18 holes with their destructive antics, something which prompted a few members to resign in disgust. Bootle, near Aintree, home of the Grand National horse race, has had its troubles, as has Bruntsfield Links in Edinburgh. Plenty more establishments will probably put up their hands.
“Sometimes, though, it is just wilful and moronic vandalism and not class-based in any way.”
Jim Croxton
If not to anywhere near the same extent as applies today, U.K. golf clubs have had nervous visions of what might happen to their properties for the last 20 years or so.
At the 2016 Open at Royal Troon, the club took the precaution of hiring Gurkha soldiers to do overnight patrols on their links. Twenty of the army veterans were selected for the purpose and duly ensured that everyone involved in the running of the championship could get a good night’s sleep.
Jim Croxton, the chief executive officer of BIGGA (the British and International Golf Greenkeepers’ Association), talked to GGP of how some of the vandals of the moment see golf courses as “smash-the-establishment targets” due to the often incorrect assumption that golf is for the upper classes.
Croxton added that one of the most badly attacked of the clubs to have been brought to his attention is Lickey Hills, south of Birmingham. “It’s an ex-municipal ‘golf-for-all,’ low-budget facility that caters for the very demographic that many of the perpetrators inhabit. Sometimes, though, it is just wilful and moronic vandalism and not class-based in any way.”
President Trump thought – incorrectly as it turned out – that the demonstrators who daubed paint all over the clubhouse and damaged the Ailsa course at Trump Turnberry a couple of months ago had ended up in jail.
That’s never going to happen to the teenage-and-twentysomething terrors, but there could be an alternative.
What about free golf lessons provided by the ridiculously well-heeled LIV Golf brigade?
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Some the damage at Braid Hills Golf Course in Edinburgh by vandals on electric bikes on May 1.
gary rodger via x