The Oldest Inland Course In The World – Lanark Golf Club (Beyond The Top 100 #2)

Nish 0:00

Every good story is about the journey, and this is the story of our journey trying to play the top 100 courses in the UK and Ireland in just 10 years. This is The Top 100 in 10 golf podcast. This is a bonus episode, and we’re going beyond the top 100 list, and we’re talking today about Lanark Golf Club. There are golf courses that shout about their history, and then there are places like Lanark. Places that almost seem quietly unaware of how important they are to golf. Places that sit away like Lanark Golf Club in South Lanarkshire, which just so happens to be one of the oldest golf clubs in the whole world. A golf course that’s been played on the same land since 1851. A golf course that’s been touched by the hand of old Tom Morris. A place where golfing history isn’t locked away in a museum somewhere. It’s still being played every

Lanark’s Charm And First Impressions

Nish 1:00

single day. In this episode, we’re exploring Lanark Golf Club, which is one of Scotland’s great golf survivors. The funny thing about Lanark Golf Club is it doesn’t actually try that hard to impress you. There are no grand resort entrances, there’s no backdrop facility, there’s no five-star hotel attached to it, there’s no sense that you’re arriving somewhere designed specifically for tourists. Instead, you feel like you’ve just stumbled across a golf course and a golf club that exists purely for the golf. And honestly, I think that is the charm of Lanark Golf Club. The welcome is warm, the clubhouse feels lived in, but also welcoming and friendly. And then you make your way over to that striking fertile and the golf course reveals itself to you. Not all at once, but just enough to leave you wondering what you’re gonna find just around the corner. Lanark’s story begins in October 1851, when four local men laid out the golf course on the town’s common land. That one small, seemingly insignificant decision laid the foundations for what would become the oldest inland golf course in the whole world. Think about that for a moment. What’s remarkable here isn’t the age, it’s the continuity, it’s the evolution of that golf course. Generation after generation,

175 Years Of Inland Golf History

Nish 2:30

leaving their mark, but striving to maintain the spirit of the game that was played there. Truly, they are custodians of the history of golf. Like so many of the great Scottish golf courses, Lanark eventually did attract some of the very biggest hitters in the world of golf and golf in Scotland. Old Tom Morris, the designer of the old course at St Andrews, helped shape the layout into the 18-course layout you see today. Then in 1927, a friend of our podcast, a name that keeps coming up over and over again, James Braid, became and enhanced the offering that you see, and probably the golf course you’re gonna see today. His refinements added a touch of that kind of je ne sais quoi that you get with true Scottish

Design Legacy Of Morris And Braid

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golf courses. And next year sees the 100th anniversary of James Braid’s work refining and shaping and crafting this amazing golf course. Yet walking around the course, none of that feels forced in any way, shape, or form. No one’s constantly reminding you of the names that really do bear heavily on the history of this golf course. There are no giant signs or plaques reminding you of who’s designed what part of the course. Instead, the architecture just reveals itself to you like a book. It’s natural, it’s simple, it’s almost instinctive, it’s at one with the land that it’s in. Now, I believe every great golf course has a moment. A place that you stand, and everything about that golf course suddenly makes sense. That moment could well be the seventh team. It’s a downhill path read. Not because it’s its most famous hole, not by any stretch. However, from this view, the whole golf course reveals itself to you. You can see everything and every detail about the routing.

The Seventh Tee Reveal View

Nish 4:30

You can understand the movement of the land. You can see what people like old Tom Morris and James Braid saw and how they wanted to craft that into a golfing challenge for you out there to enjoy. And you start to get a real feel for why golf has survived in Lanark for 175 years. Let that sink in with 175 years. It’s simply a wonderful place to spend a few hours playing golf and taking it all in. Strangely, what struck me most wasn’t the history. And I’m a real history golf when it comes to the golf courses. What struck me most was the pride. The pride in the members, the pride in Andy, who is the manager who showed me around, and just the pride in the upkeep of that golf course. The people at Lanark Golf Club that genuinely care about the place. They’ve spent many a day, many an evening going through old minute books to uncover the history of the place. Uncovering stories that had almost been forgotten. Lost holes, lost connections, army links, whole names that they didn’t know existed before. Really curious names like the cabbages, little pieces of golfing history that would have disappeared if somebody hadn’t taken the time to understand and uncover it all. And that is the thing about clubs like Lanark. They aren’t to be preserved in museums. They’re preserved by the members. People who understand they’re not the owners of that history. They are something much bigger than that, and they are custodians. They are there, and they understand they are there to look after something that will pass on from generation to generation and has been doing so for 175 years. To understand Lanark properly, I sat down with the general manager, Andy. We talked about 175 years of history, we talked about Old Tar Morris, we talked about James Braid, we talked about military connections, and we talked about why Lanark still remains one of Scottish golf’s best kept secrets. But the word is getting out. So take me back to the beginning. How did golf actually end up here in Lanark?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 6:44

On October the 4th, 1851, that was when they first played golf on the common moor. Thomas

Andy Romer On Origins And Legacy

Andy Romer – Club Manager 6:53

Purde, William Luthgow, Robert Luthgow, and John Vassey, they were the founding members. They played golf in the moor, and there were six holes set up, and that’s basically how it started.

Nish 7:06

Amazing. And was there was there kind of a was there much history of golf being played here? Because a lot of clubs have that, don’t they? Where just the ground.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 7:14

There was much history before before this they started playing on the common moor. Um that really just goes for there, and we still have six of the five or six of the original holes. It’s original land anyway. The golf course has never moved. Golf course has been here for 175 years this year. Um it’s just evolved around here.

Nish 7:38

And that that is an absolutely fabulous golf course. We’ve had the the pleasure of playing it this morning. Um you you’re Andrew, you’re Andy, I should say, uh, and you’re the general manager here at uh Lanark Golf Club. Um obviously one of the big figures in history, in the history here is Tom Morris. So how does he fit into the history of the club?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 7:58

Tom Morris was paid, I think if I remember right, £3.10 shillings to refine the course into an 18-hole course from the six.

Nish 8:09

Right.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 8:10

And that’s the 18-hole course that we have today. And I think if you play any Tom Morris course, the features and the holes, you know you’re playing a Tom Morris course.

Nish 8:20

Wonderful. And do you do you feel any uh pressure, or is it that positive could be positive or negative of that legacy of of old Tom Morris?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 8:29

I think it’s positive. We don’t really feel any pressure, but I do when you have some people remarking on holes where we should maybe make alterations and stuff like that, you actually think to yourself, Tom Morris done this. We don’t need to change this.

Nish 8:45

We don’t need exactly yeah.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 8:46

We don’t need any changes at all. I think the only changes that we’ve had are maybe tea replacements and maybe bunker bunkerage uh replacements, but nothing nothing major. We’re just stuck Tom Morris. That’s that’s where we are.

Nish 9:00

Yeah. Obviously, we’re we’re celebrating the 175-year anniversary of the golf club. Yeah. Um what what challenges are you facing as a modern golf club at the moment?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 9:11

I think it’s basically the same challenges every business has now. Um financial, obviously, with the financial prices and the world going up. It’s just trying to find a proper balance. We’re keeping the membership fees down and trying to keep the visitors’ fees so that we can attract the visitors because we’re basically we’re in the middle, we’re in the middle of everywhere at the moment. So if you go an hour east, you’ve got East Lothian and that and the golf course is there.

Modern Club Pressures And Visitor Strategy

Andy Romer – Club Manager 9:40

And if you go an hour west, we’ve got the Ayrshire coast. So we’re kind of stuck in the middle of it. So it is a kind of it’s not a stay-and-play course, it’s a stopover course. We try and attract the visitors by saying playing your way up the first and your way up or way up or your way down, or play last in your in your thing. And to be fair, in the last two or three years we’ve done really, really well.

Nish 10:03

Great.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 10:03

We’ve done really well.

Nish 10:04

So yeah, I mean I think the the the course absolutely stacks up. I mean, our whole um raison d’etre is that we’re we’re trying to play top 100 golf courses, yeah. And the the reason we’re here today is that loads of people brought up Lanark as a place like you can have your list, but it’s a place you really must visit. And it does, it does stack up as a as a golf course against them.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 10:29

We’ve done a really, really lot of hard work on social media uh and the marketing in the last two or three years to attract people because a lot of people didn’t even know we were we existed, to be fair. Uh and it’s worked, it’s really worked. Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen a huge rise in the visitors in the last two years. And once, as you say, once somebody comes and plays it and the word of mouth gets about, it’s beginning we’re beginning to get a wee bit of publicity and stuff like that from other places now. So really, really happy with where we are at the moment.

Nish 11:04

Yeah, I mean of course conditioning was was fantastic. We’re sat in a beautiful clubhouse, it’s overlooking the 18th green. Uh quite nerve-wracking for visitors when you’re putting out and you can see the gallery of members watching you. But you know, it it we’ve had a wonderful welcome here as well. So uh as as as a members club, which is you know kind of kind of what you are, but what is it what does it mean for people to be a member here?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 11:28

It means I think it means a lot to the members here, basically because of what you can see and what you’ve played. The course is everything for the members. We try and keep it as cheap, but not as cheap as possible. We try and keep it as as the fees down as little as possible so that they can get the full experience. And obviously in the clubhouse as well, clubhouse has been here for the same amount of time as 1851. So in the oldest course and inland course in the world, we found that out as well. We’ve worked that one out as well. So it’s really about being a member Lanark Golf Club as the course. We don’t like to say these things, but to get a better course, you need to go to the you need to go to the coast or go in the eels.

Nish 12:19

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 12:20

We we we’ve got a really good, really good feeling about where we are at the moment, and we’re just gonna try and build on it. And the members are an integral part of it.

Nish 12:31

Yeah. I mean it we we gotta did get a sense of that, that the the course and the club feels like it’s just like you know, when you’re not somebody something’s comfortable in their skin, it feels that. It’s like we know who we are, we know what we’re about, we know how good our course is. You we don’t need to, it’s almost like we don’t need to scream and shout about it as such, but the quality, the quality is there. It was yeah, it was a fabulous, fabulous golf course. Um is what sort of traditions I mean, obviously being such an old club, and and the main thing is like it’s the the old.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 13:04

A few traditions, and we’ve got a good well we had a a bond with the uh the British Army because Winston Barracks is quite it’s not Winston Barracks anymore, but it was close to here. And we had the army camp on the golf course in the early 1900s, so there’s a tradition and a tie with the army. We have many other trophies that we play for here in Silverwear are tied to the army as well. We’ve got the Army Cup, we’ve got the Cameroonian Bowl, we have the HLI clique, we have the HLI Cup,

Army Links And Reviving Traditions

Andy Romer – Club Manager 13:39

which are all donated by uh the British Army, and we still we still actually tie up with the Cameroonians uh to play the Aiken trophy every year, which in fact will be on Sunday coming. Uh 12 members of the armed retired members of the armed forces are coming and they play our council in the in the course. So that’s been on for uh a few a lot a lot of years, and we just try and keep these traditions going.

Nish 14:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 14:08

Tradition means quite a lot to a few people in the club, quite a lot of people in the club, and we just try and keep every tradition that we found out after coming back from COVID. Some got lost, but we’re trying to get we’re finding them again and we’re trying to promote them every year now.

Nish 14:23

That’s great. Well and um um we we obviously had a bit of a chat, and you were very kind to give me a bit of a tour of the clubhouse and the links that you’ve you sort of found, and what’s that journey been like in discovering that history and now trying to promote it? How’s that felt for you?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 14:40

It was it was really, really interesting to start with when I started the job here. One of the things we said was we we we didn’t we had the history, we didn’t really

Minute Books Lost Holes And Nicknames

Andy Romer – Club Manager 14:50

promote the history. So one of one of uh the things that I tried to do was we tried to look through the history books. We had books on it, we had that we all knew the history, but there was nothing shown for the visitors or even the members to come and see. So we’ve done a few things in the in the corridor, made a history wall. We’ve done a few things over social media. One of the guys, one of the guys that helps us is called Jamie. He does it, he does all our social media stuff. He is second, he’s brilliant. So he promotes all that stuff. He he’s a historian buff. He just loves it.

Nish 15:23

Amazing.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 15:24

He comes in and reads all the books. We found in the cupboard, we found the minute books from 1851 onwards. So we’ve read them, we’ve read through them and just went through right through the history, and we’re still working on it, we’re still going, we’re still finding things that we didn’t know about the club, and we’re still trying to promote things.

Nish 15:42

Yeah. I mean that’s actually quite in our journey. We found that’s probably quite a rare thing because usually there’s something has happened which has meant that that you know there’s either been a fire or something’s happened where the clubhouse has changed, been rebuilt. Yeah. I can imagine that that’s a time when a lot of history does get lost because either it’s burnt down or you know it’s been stolen or whatever. Yeah, but it feels like that’s all here, it’s embedded, it’s in situ, it hasn’t changed.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 16:06

So part of the course that we didn’t know, well, I didn’t know personally until we started digging in here. Part of the course actually used to be where our car park is now. So we’ve lost these holes because one of the things we’re going to do in the 17th fifth anniversary is we’re going to have a hickory day on the on the Sunday of the 4th of October, and we were trying to get some of the original holes, but obviously some of them were lost. And I wouldn’t think you’re like somebody hitting a hickory, a ball with a hickory over your car. So we’re just going to try and keep on the original holes that we have at the moment. Uh, but these things, it’s just it’s amazing to read these things and see where these where the things used to be. Like we’ve got a bit at the left-hand side of the 18th screen, it’s called the cabbages. And I didn’t understand why it was called the cabbages until we started reading into the history. And it used to be a house just built at the other side of the highway, and that was her garden. That was her back garden, so that was what it was called the cabbages. So they grew their vegetables there, so it’s always been the cabbages.

Nish 17:07

Not a colloquialism for being in the rough. No, that’s fantastic, isn’t it? No, but looking at where Lanark sits in the history of Scottish golf, there is one huge name that’s involved, and the name that we encounter all the time, that’s Mr. James Braid. Yeah. What’s his involvement been with the with the club?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 17:26

James Braid was employed in 1927 to refine some of the course. Yeah, the 18 holes that we actually see, and now it’s actually been refined by James Braid. So that will be 100 years next year as well, another anniversary. And for for the amount of courses he’s done in that day with the transport issues, it’s unbelievable that every a lot of courses have got James Braid tied to them. But he was here, as I said, a hundred years ago, and he refined the 18 homes that we have uh at the moment.

Nish 18:00

So if somebody was out there at the minute as a visitor coming to Lanark, they’re gonna get a wonderfully warm welcome, we did, and it was fantastic. Which hole are they gonna be on where you think that’s the Lanark moment?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 18:15

It’s funny, because people ask you what your favourite hole is at Lanark, and I can’t I can’t see what my favourite hole was. Their favourite hole, I would think, for a view is when you’re standing on the seventh Tee. The seventh is a short path three downhill, but it overlooks the full course, basically. You can see right through the full course, and you’ve got a view of Tinto Hill behind. And and the weather’s like this, it’s it’s just a beautiful outlook. Beautiful outlook. But favourite hole, the full course.

Nish 18:43

The full course. I love that. I mean, how good is that to be able to say that? That’s fantastic. Um, obviously the the the course probably hasn’t changed a huge amount. Obviously, you had some holes moved and things like that, but you know, it’s got a feeling of the kind of the kind of it’s the purity of golf here. You know, why is a place like Lanark important in the history of golf?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 19:07

Well, the 25th oldest club in the in Scotland. Uh in the world, so basically we’re 25th oldest club in Scotland because we we all know where golf started. I just we just feel that we are a special place. We were there’s a bit of history known if you read into it that uh it was Lanark or Gleneagles, and one vote took the took get to Glen eagles. So if the vote had gone another way, we’d be sitting in a in a beautiful place now. I wouldn’t be sitting here today, but we’d be sitting in a beautiful, beautiful big hotel or whatever. But the mut is it’s well thought of. Lanark is well thought of in the golfing industry, and like if you speak to some of the people, and they always you always get asked, like I go to St Andrews quite a few times, and you always get asked, how’s it going? How’s Lanark getting getting on with people that don’t even know?

Nish 20:02

That’s wonderful. What a wonderful thing to have. Um, we all sort of talked uh previously about that balance of preserving the history versus then the modern expectations of a golf club. Um, aside from you know the challenges that you’re facing with that, but are there any things that you absolutely steadfastly refuse to change about Manek?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 20:22

I don’t think there’s anything really we’ve been forced to change. Obviously, we need to change some, the greenkeepers and that need to change some of their practices as modernisation and new methods come in and stuff gets banned and stuff like that for putting on the course that you used to be able to put on the course. The only thing that we have done in say recent history is we bought the land from the local council.

Nish 20:50

Right.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 20:50

So the local council it was common land, the local co local council owned the land, and we owned it. The only thing that Lanark Golf Club owned was the clubhouse and the land the clubhouse is on. So uh I I would I would be guessing about the 19s, late 70s, 80s, Lanark Golf Club purchased the purchased the course. Yeah. So it’s all ours now.

Nish 21:11

So wonderful. You can you can go about the job of preserving that history yourself now.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 21:17

Preserving that history and keeping where we are, where we are. As we said, some of the things that you find out we speak to like people that have played here before, and like the army camp, and the army camp used to be on the where our practice range is in the 90s, the early 1900s. And it’s just it’s it’s it’s over sometimes it’s overwhelming when you read some of the history and you’re thinking, Ah God, really, did that happen?

Nish 21:43

Yeah. And you’re the custodian of that, sort of, you know, going going forward. But um what what what do you feel is the biggest challenge of protecting and preserving a course like like this?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 21:54

The weather.

Nish 21:55

Weather, right, okay.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 21:56

The weather. Yeah. I wouldn’t have realized until I started working. Here. How the weather dictates everything concerning the golf club. The weather dictates how busy you are, it dictates how the course conditions are, it dictates how many people come into the clubhouse. It’s just your fingers are crossed, you’re just hoping that the weather is good to you.

Nish 22:20

Yeah.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 22:22

And so far this year it’s been not it’s been a horrible year for being wet, but it’s been not too bad to be.

Weather Drainage And Year Round Play

Nish 22:31

Wonderful.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 22:34

We are a good draining draining course. We can have a a real heavy shower of rain, real flood, but within an hour it’s away because we’re built on glacier sand. And it does drain very quickly.

Nish 22:48

Yeah. So generally speaking, you’re playable all year round and yeah, wonderful. Now, one thing I have to ask you, and you can’t fail to miss them. And I’m hoping people who are sort of in the um they’ll they’ll watch the episode on YouTube. There is a flank of houses along the side of the golf course.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 23:07

Yeah.

Nish 23:08

And I said to my playing partners, I was like, at what point did we end up in Beverly Hills? You know, I mean, they’re in wonderful houses, wonderful houses. How does one buy how does one buy one of them? What an outlook, you know. You’ve got the the luck in the background, you’ve got this amazing golf course. Uh I mean that’s just a fabulous place to be in the world, isn’t it?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 23:28

You have to be lucky. You have to be lucky to get that. You always say if you win the lottery, that’s where I’m staying, that’s where I’m looking. Because if you woke up in the morning and opened your curtains and you see that I have a beautiful, I have it every day when I come in. That’s my view for work.

Nish 23:43

Yeah.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 23:44

It’s just stunning. Stunning.

Nish 23:46

Yeah, I mean I have to say that that impression as soon as you and it’s it’s really good because behind the first Tee there is a hedge. And I’m um it may or may not have been strategically very well placed. So you do come up and you do get that reveal moment of suddenly seeing the whole golf course, and it’s a wonderful view. I thoroughly recommend anybody to try and try and get that. Um, but if somebody uh someone leaves here understanding just one thing about Lanark’s history, what do you think that should be?

Andy Romer – Club Manager 24:15

I think they should realise that I think they will realise that they’ve played at the oldest inland course in the world. I don’t think we used to market ourselves as the 25th oldest club in the world, and we’d done a bit of digging and we found out that all the courses in front of us were links courses. So we’re the oldest inland course in the world, so we’d promote it on that now. And I think they’ll walk away, they’ll walk away from here and they’ll be telling their golfing friends you need to play at Lana. We see quite a bit of that on social media when we put posts on social media, people posting, we need to go here, we need to go here. Yeah, and that they’ll walk away with walk away from here with a great experience.

Nish 25:01

Yeah, and it’s a thoroughly playable golf course as well. We we had such good fun out there, yeah. Um yeah, you’ve done you’ve done an absolutely wonderful job with that, Andy. Um look, we’ll we wish you all the very best, and you’ve got a fan, you’ve obviously got the 175 years this year, yeah. Next year, I think you’ve sending something. 100 James Braid.

Andy Romer – Club Manager 25:19

100 years of James Braid.

Nish 25:21

So it’s another reason to get the champagne on ice and uh and and and celebrate. Now Lanark was a round that I enjoyed immensely. It had everything that I love about golf, it had views, it had history that I could nerd out on, and it just had a feeling of vibe about it that just put you at ease. There was lots for you to take in, there was a variety of terrain, you had trees there, you had flatter land, you had undulation. It was incredible. I absolutely loved it. And I would say, even more than my round, which was already right up there, I really enjoyed spending time with Andy and the time that he gave me

Three Reasons To Add Lanark

Nish 26:01

in showing me around, and I could really get a sense of the pride that he had in his work and how happy he was with the quality of output that they’ve got and the feedback they get from everybody walking around. The members were so nice. I spoke to a few people in the clubhouse afterwards, and they were just really happy that I was doing something like this feature for Lanarno and bringing a few more eyeballs uh to the golf club. So I would like to wrap up by giving you three reasons why you need to add a Lanark Golf Club to your list of golf courses you must play. Reason number one is I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve played Gleneagles before. If you want to get the Gleneagles vibe from a golf course without the green fee associated with playing at Gleneagles, Lanark is the place that you need to add onto your list immediately. I can totally understand why this this parcel of land was up against the parcel of land where they did eventually build the Gleneagles Hotel. I’ve got the scenery, I’ve got the feels, and I can totally understand when Andy says that Lanark, the site of Lanark was one vote short of becoming what did become the Gleneagles Hotel and the golf courses there. I totally get it, I totally understand it. So that’s a fantastic first reason to visit Lanark Golf Club. Reason number two, and it’s the positioning of where Lanark is. If you’re going up to play golf in Scotland, you head up the motorway and you go either left towards Glasgow or you go right towards Edinburgh. And you’ve got those two great centres of golf, the east and west coast of Scotland. Now, Lanark sits right at that intersection. So if you’re either going up or you’re coming back down, that is a great place to stop off and play some golf and take in the oldest inland golf course in the whole world. It’s such a convenient stop. Make sure you do it. And then reason number three is just what I alluded to, and that is how often can you say that you’ve done something that is the oldest or the first or whatever. To say that you’ve played the oldest inland golf course in the whole world. It’s the oldest in Scotland, therefore it’s the oldest in the world. What an amazing thing. And you totally get taken back and transported to the origins of golf. You have that feel about it. And I went in very much in that spirit, and I felt that it just delivered on all of that. So I’ll say it again make sure you add Lanark to your list of golf courses that you absolutely must play. You will not regret it one bit. Until next time, on the top 100 in 10 golf podcast.