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Royal Aberdeen Golf Club
It would be recognized as older still than that if the gentlemen of the Society had felt the need to ballot the membership in regard to new recruits to their number before that date. Almost certainly they could have because there is little doubt that the gentlemen of Aberdeen were playing golf on the links two centuries earlier than that - including Sundays - although clearly they had felt no need at that time to gather around them the blandishments of officialdom and bureaucracy. In fact it was not until the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that the club as we know it today - but without its Royal prefix - came into being and incorporated the old Society. The Society members brought with them the old ballot box bearing the 1780 date and the president’s chair, dated three years later. The evidence of golf at Aberdeen from as far back the late 16th century is strong enough and there is further confirmation of the game in the minutes of the old Town Council written towards the middle of the 17th century when John Dickson of Leith was granted a “license and tolerance” to make golf balls within the burgh . Royal Aberdeen’s credentials of antiquity are therefore well established and a visit to the course soon confirms its other credentials, those of one of the most testing and spectacular courses in Scotland. The original course was laid out on a strip of common land between the Don and Dee rivers. In the second half of the 19th century the Club acquired the present course on the north side of the river. There is dramatic scenery here, beautiful expansive scenery all the more easily visible from a variety of tees set high in the sand dunes most of them offering marvelous views across the wide expanse of Aberdeen Bay. It would be difficult to find a better outward nine holes in the whole of Scotland, and therefore by extension the whole of the British Isles perhaps, than at Balgownie. Longer than the back nine by close to 400 yards the opening nine holes are nothing short of superb. There are occasions on this front nine, standing on several of the tees, when it is difficult to know if there is a fairway to play to all. All around is topography that would test the resources of astronauts training for a moon walk, and yet when the valleys between and around the sand dunes emerge into view, there is revealed that wonderful crisp turf only found on the true links land beside the sea. The return journey to the old clubhouse is shorter of length but into the wind most of the time, making it feel much longer than the 3000 yards the score card assures us it is. The short 11th is a test of nerve and club selection and the absence of a par 5 makes the nominal par of 34 a doughty challenge for even the bravest heart and the best of ball strikers. It did not worry local member John P. Grant many moons ago when he holed the course in 63 strokes in a medal, with the only tragedy for Grant that he had a putt for a 61 and three-putted! That eminent Scottish golf writer, Sam McKinley, who never tired of quoting the old professional who said: “It’s no’ possible, but it’s a fac’,” was not short to apply that quotation to Mr Grant’s remarkable efforts. The Club was granted Royal status in 1903, when the then secretary, Colonel M.M. Duncan, read out to the members the letter from Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the Secretary of State for Scotland, informing Colonel James Davidson, Captain of the Club, that King Edward V11 had granted the club’s petition “to use the royal title”. His Majesty also became Patron of the Club. However, it was not the Club’s first association with Royalty. That began in 1872 when Prince Leopold became the Patron of the Club until his death in 1884. In 1925 James Braid of Great Triumvirate fame but by then firmly established in his role as golf course designer and refurbisher, was due to visit the Forfar Golf Club to redesign the holes Old Tom Morris had first laid out there in 1871. A committee member at Royal Aberdeen learned of his impending visit and suggested to the Club that the five times Open Champion be approached and asked to give his opinion on the Balgownie links. Braid visited the Club and then submitted his usual detailed report outlining alterations and additions to the bunkering, together with the leveling of some of the bumps. It appears that Royal Aberdeen were less impressed with Braid than were the gentlemen of Forfar. The Angus links underwent much in the way of alteration for Braid’s nine guinea fee plus expenses, while Royal Aberdeen adopted only a limited number of the great man’s suggestions. The Club remains insistent that Braid did not remodel the course but simply refined it, and that such refinements undertaken were essentially cosmetic. Royal Aberdeen has hosted many important tournaments over the decades including both of the Scottish Amateur Championships and the Northern Open and most recently the British Seniors Open won by Tom Watson. They have always been keen on their Rules at Royal Aberdeen and the golfing law now enshrined that players may have only five minutes to look for a lost ball was established at Royal Aberdeen as far back as 1783. It first appeared as Law X11 in the Laws of the Game drawn up by the Society of Golfers at Aberdeen and was worded thus; “The Part whose Ball is amissing shall be allowed Five Minutes to search for it, after coming to the Spot where the Ball appeared to drop.” In the early 1980s, however, the members went for a long time without even getting five minutes to look for their golf balls. A plague of crows descended on the course and whisked the balls away as soon as they landed! Fortunately, the plague left as abruptly as it arrived and the members went back once again to having the luxury of a full five minutes to find lost golf balls.
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In the league table of golf course antiquity, the name of the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club stands at number six and deserves to be much better known to the wider world than perhaps it is. Here, at the Balgownie links on the other side of the River Don, but hardly a mile from the Granite City, is history indeed, a club which was founded as the Society of Golfers at Aberdeen as far back as 1780 and one of the most testing of all the great Scottish links.