Golf club marks 150 years with academy
£150,000 facility will be ready for use by 2020
A new £150,000 community academy is to be built at Stirling Golf Club to mark the club’s 150th anniversary.
It will comprise a long-game academy, two short-game academies, a putting academy and a six-hole academy, with artificial target greens. Work started last month on the facility which is scheduled to be ready for use in spring 2020.
It is also being created to encourage those who are disadvantaged or challenged in the community and might not normally have the chance to start playing golf.
SportScotland awarded a grant of £50,000 towards its total cost and the golf club matched the money donated.
The £150,000 funding target was achieved during the summer, allowing the development to begin on schedule.
Swan Golf Designs created a 10-year masterplan for improvements to the whole golf course back in 2012.
Howard Swan of SGD explained: “We reviewed the practice area in the original audit and, considering the seventh-year of the plan coincided with the 150th anniversary of the club, we suggested, rather than carry out work on the course and intrude on celebrations, we should, instead, look at improving the practice facilities and making them more inclusive.
“The Stirling150Academy makes maximum use of a small area. And, with the assistance of a progressive group in the membership, the drive of professional Kenny Monaghan, and assistance from Anthony Blackburn, from Golf in Society – a social enterprise which uses golf to improve the lives of the ageing population so affected by dementia – we produced a concept focussed on the community, which encourages participation of the local schools and population.
“Sport Scotland described the plan and the document as an ‘exemplary approach’ for golf clubs in the future. We’re always looking to see how we can make golf more sustainable – and that ethos was recognised by the merits of the public purse. Both SGD and Stirling GC are extending the arms of welcome to those who traditionally may have lacked the opportunity to play our wonderful sport.”
Stirling Golf Club dates from 1869, when Young Tom Morris, the club’s first professional, laid out a seven-hole course at Kings Park.
In 1892, his father, Old Tom Morris, then the professional and custodian of the links at St Andrews, produced and implemented a plan for nine holes, the first major alteration to the original course.