The median temperature in Scotland in the most recent decade to the end of 2019 was about 0.7C warmer than the average between 1961 and 1990, with the country’s 10 hottest years on record all occurring since 1997. Sea levels around the UK have risen by approximately 1.4mm per year since the start of the 20th century, and rain patterns have altered with the increasing frequency of heavy downpours.
These changes are projected to continue and intensify in the coming decades, with researchers at the James Hutton Institute predicting a 2C to 4C increase in mean monthly maximum temperatures between 2020 and 2049. Winter precipitation is expected to increase by 50 per cent during the next 60 years, with a 25 per cent decrease in the summer months.
“This is a critical challenge for golf clubs and also one of the greatest crises in human history,” according to Robbie Fitzpatrick of the GEO Foundation. “We are likely to see warmer, wetter winters, and drier, hotter summers, and therefore ever-increasing climatic challenges heading into the future.”
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Mr Fitzpatrick, who has a PhD in sustainable golf from the University of St Andrews, was speaking in October at a webinar organised by Scottish Golf to help its member clubs with efforts at mitigating the impact of climate change on their most valuable asset – their courses.
“It’s changeable weather, isn’t it?” says Andrew Baptie, head of club services and governance at Scottish Golf. “So we’re seeing clubs having to re-educate themselves in that context on how they can look after their number one asset when the weather is wetter and there are more extreme weather events.”
Surrendering to the sea
Probably nowhere is this more evident than in Montrose, where golf has been played at the town’s course on the Angus coast since 1562.
Despite the widespread destruction wreaked in January by Storm Éowyn, with winds in excess of 100mph leaving more than 280,000 Scottish homes without power, the direction of that gale was favourable for Montrose Golf Links and left it relatively unscathed. But the 2023/24 winter storm season was a different matter altogether as Babet, Gerritt, Isha and Jocelyn collectively swept away huge chunks of coastline.
“Some years are good,” according to course manager Paul Teviotdale. “Some years we’ll maybe lose just a metre. Other years like last year, we lost 10 to 15 metres in some parts of holes.
It has been estimated more than 100 of Scotland’s golf courses are suffering the effects of coastal erosion or expect to in the near future. They range from relatively small community clubs to some of the country’s most famous golfing terrain.
St Andrews Links Trust has been in charge of the longest-running dune restoration project in Scotland at West Sands in its capacity as custodian of the Old Course.
Last year the charity also purchased a significant amount of farmland to the western extremity of the other six courses it manages as part of a sustainability programme to maintain the future of the links.
In Ayrshire, Royal Troon is set to spend more than £1 million in the medium-term on erosion defences that will include additional protection for the right-hand flank of the 6th, which last year became the longest Par 5 in Open Championship history.
“We’re not a well-off golf club,” he says. “I’m not pleading poverty or anything like that but we don’t have the finances like St Andrews, Carnoustie, those kinds of courses. We’re just a community golf course with reasonably decent club fees for everyone.”
Mr Teviotdale has nine greenkeeping staff looking after 36 holes that lie between Montrose Bay and the town, which is roughly 1,000 metres from the edge of the crumbling dune. Two new rock armour groynes will be built along the beach this year as part of the wider Montrose Coastal Erosion Project led by Angus Council, which has secured £440,000 of funding from the Scottish Government’s coastal change adaptation fund.
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Further applications are being submitted to finance long-term plans to replenish the sediment along the beach, which it is hoped will slow down the destruction.
“When you look back to old photos of what we had you see some of the dune going away up at the back of some of the tees, and now the tees are just there on the edge of the dune or falling into the dune, irrigation pipes and everything hanging out,” Mr Teviotdale says.
“It’s really scary when you see it. It’s almost getting to the point when I’m talking about erosion, because everyone knows I’m a greenkeeper, it’s a question of is Montrose Golf Links worth saving? But I’m not on about the golf course, I’m on about the town, because if this carries on the town is under threat.”
Stuck in the mud
Changing weather patterns create a different set of challenges for inland courses such as Whitecraigs on the south side of Glasgow, where Andy Wilson and his team of eight greenkeepers maintain detailed records on rainfall, temperatures, frost levels and storm damage.
“The weather events we get now are more severe,” he says. “We seem to be getting big wind events on a more regular basis and heavier rain events where you will get something like 40mm over a very short period of time, as happened at the end of last year.”
As of late February Whitecraigs was still clearing up about 40 trees downed by Storm Éowyn on January 24, while others such as Hilton Park and Strathaven reported the loss of more than 100 trees each. Usually accompanied by heavy downpours, the damage from these increasingly frequent severe spells of weather must be managed around day-to-day demands.
“When you’re getting big heavy rain events, your bunkers tend to wash out and there’s a whole lot of work needed to fix them again, so we’ve invested in Capillary Concrete bunkers which drain better, and we’ve drained our greens. We’ve adapted to what we’re seeing, and a lot of golf clubs are now having to do that kind of thing.”
Parkland courses have historically been dominated by less fine grasses than the fescues common to their coastal counterparts, which means they require more intensive moisture management. Jim Croxton, chief executive of the British and International Golf Greenkeepers’ Association (BIGGA), says some are now looking to change their grass species to “future-proof” their courses.
“That’s a big decision because that will take five years at least to successfully change the grass on putting surfaces, for example, to make them much more manageable as the weather changes, and generally speaking that journey can be a little challenging,” he notes.
“There could be a tough season within that as the greens transition across, and that’s difficult because golfers’ expectations are very high at all times. People don’t really want to hear that in order to have this club here in 10 years, we are going to have a couple of difficult years. It’s not a popular message.”
At Whitecraigs, where Mr Wilson has worked since 2018, there are at least two or three different winter maintenance projects on the go at any point in time so the greenkeepers can shift their activities according to what the weather allows.
This has also prolonged the growing season meaning that grass must be cut later into the year, adding to fuel costs for running the mowers.
“If you went back to 20 years ago, we didn’t cut greens and fairways hardly ever during the winter,” Mr Wilson says.
“But I was out in January there cutting the fairways because we still had a wee bit of growth.
“Things are changing. You’re not getting as many severe frosts as you used to get, although we have had a few, but we’re now cutting to an extent right the way through the year whereas before there would be no more growth after October.”
Great expectations
Another more subtle impact of milder winters is that more people want to come out and play, creating additional wear and tear during a period when courses would have otherwise been in recuperation mode.
“When I first became a greenkeeper in the year 2000 I could name virtually all the people who played during the winter,” Mr Wilson says.
“I could have told you the 20 guys that played each Wednesday and the 20 that played each Thursday, but now we’re regularly seeing up to 100 people a day playing golf [in the winter], which is quite amazing really. The course is the most valuable asset in all golf clubs, so they invest in their course and they have to keep up with player expectations.
“Members look at the TV and they see Augusta and Pebble Beach and whatnot and we obviously can’t give them that in the winter but we want the course as good as it can possibly be, so we are always striving to try and improve.”
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Failing to meet those expectations risks the loss of members with an obvious impact on club finances, while course closures due to flooding or generally unplayable conditions curtail visitor income. In addition to these hazards, Mr Croxton at BIGGA says milder, wetter weather is also bringing new agronomic threats.
“For example, there is a turf disease called Dollar Spot that used to be predominantly a warm climate issue,” he says. “Years ago we would see a little bit of it, potentially in the south of England, but this year we’ve seen that as far north as Scotland.”
The increasingly precise application of nutrition and pest control agents now common in agriculture is making its way into greenkeeping practices, offering opportunities for cost savings. This is regarded as a “win-win” as it’s also kinder to the environment, a message Scottish Golf is attempting to drive home through its tie-up with the GEO Foundation.
Headquartered in North Berwick, the foundation is a non-profit organisation set up in 2006 by executive director Jonathan Smith with the aim of promoting sustainability throughout golf. Working across the amateur and professional game, the GEO Foundation provides programmes and tools to help safeguard the future of golf by improving its positive impact on the environment.
Mr Croxton says efforts such as these are being aided out on the course by the ability to identify exactly how much fertiliser, water or pest control is needed and then apply that specifically to the affected areas. This avoids the waste of blanket treatment.
“So there are some savings, but they are long-term savings,” he says. “It’s like moving to solar panels – there’s a big expense upfront and you reap your reward a few years down the line.”
Similarly, autonomous and electrically powered greenkeeping equipment bring long-term cost savings but at a hefty upfront price. An electric machine is roughly double the price of diesel equivalents which themselves range from approximately £7,000 for a John Deere riding mower up to £22,000 or more for a larger Toro rotary mower.
“There are no short-term savings to be had, I think it’s fair to say, which means to you and I as golfers that we won’t see our subscriptions and our green fees dropping any time soon,” Mr Croxton says.
“I think they are going to have to keep going up, as it seems everything else in life is doing.”
