IF YOU JUST WANT TO BUY A MAP, WITHOUT READING THE STORY, THEN CLICK HERE!
If you had told me a year ago that I would be trying to sell golf maps at a tenner a pop I would have wondered what on earth you were talking about. But, thanks to an idle tweet one lockdown Saturday morning, I have ended up doing just that.
It quickly became clear that a foreign summer holiday would be unlikely for my family in 2020. So, instead, when restrictions were eased, we decided to take a fortnight’s motorhome tour around Scotland. As part of the planning, I tweeted a request for inspiration on where to go:
Plenty of helpful suggestions followed (thanks to all!) and I had this exchange -
John was right that there was no map showing all the golf courses in Scotland. Collins had produced one but it has been out of print for a few years.
As we travelled around a slightly damp Scotland in our motorhome I found myself using the campsite map a lot, replotting our route in an attempt to escape the rain. I don’t remember the last time I had a physical map in my hands, but it was really useful to lay out out the map on the table to discuss our panic rerouting with my wife and kids.
The tweet from @drakeydistiller came back to me and I realised that a map which showed all the Scottish golf courses would be really useful. Of course, I knew where all the big names were, but Scotland has a golf course around every corner, and being able to see them in one place would be helpful.
I think we can all agree that 2020 was a fairly dull year, and the combination of the lockdown and a winding-down job meant I had plenty of time on my hands. I’m also the kind of person who likes a project, so I set about seeing what it would take to publish a map of every golf course in Scotland.
I really liked the campsite map I’d been using on holiday so I sent an email to the company who had produced them - Nicolson Maps. I quickly got a positive response and they put me in touch with the head cartographer, Val, who explained to me what producing a map would entail.
Val is a master of her art and proved to be an absolute godsend, She patiently took me through the process of producing a map. The first step was identifying all of the golf courses in Scotland. That would be an easy one, wouldn’t it? There would surely be a list somewhere. Ah…
My requests to Scottish Golf fell on deaf ears. In fairness, they were trying to roll out the World Golf Handicap system at the time so I wasn’t high up their ‘to do’ list. Visit Scotland had an online brochure which I could have printed out but I heard rumblings that it didn’t include all the courses, and it wasn’t in the most user-friendly format for my needs.
But then I came across a website - http://scottishgolfcourses-allofthem.blogspot.com/ - which chronicled the attempts of keen Scottish golfer Alan McPherson to play every course in Scotland. Here was a man clearly obsessed with Scottish golf and he seemed like he might be the man I was looking for. Within an hour of an email, Alan was in touch and was incredibly helpful. He had a comprehensive list of every place in Scotland where golf was played.
As of last November, Alan had played at 674 places - he is trying to play anywhere that has fixed tees and greens, including pitch and putt courses and those on private land. It’s quite an endeavour and luckily for me he had a very detailed spreadsheet - by far the most comprehensive list I had found.
The next stage was to go through every one of the courses on Alan’s list to see whether they should make the cut for the final map. Quite a few had closed since Alan had played, so that was an easy decision. Others were courses played only by the owners of private estates. Alan had managed to get onto these as part of a charity quest but they weren’t looking for anyone else to visit so I excluded them too.
There were others which you could debate. Asta has 9 holes that can be played both clockwise and anti-clockwise. Alan had rightly taken it to be two courses. For the purpose of my map, it was just one.
Through a combination of web research, emails and phone calls I whittled the list down to 569 courses. There may still be a few questionable ones included - for example I have shown the North Berwick and Gullane kids’ courses for personal, sentimental reasons. I am sure I will receive feedback on some of my choices for inclusion (or exclusion) and the second edition may require some edits!
The next part of the process was a little unexpected. Val sent me a large scale map of Scotland for me to plot the courses on. This took a few days of research, Google maps was hit hard and a very fine pen was needed. There are some areas of Scotland with very tightly packed golf courses! I realised this was going to be an iterative process.
I had decided early on that I wanted the names of the courses on the map, rather than some kind of numbering index system, to make it more user-friendly. I also realised I didn’t need to put in full contact details for the courses - these days everyone can Google the details they need once the map has provided the inspiration. I also wanted the top 100 courses to be highlighted.
When Val received my scribblings she plotted them onto the digital map. There was clearly going to be an issue in the central belt of Scotland - around Glasgow and Edinburgh. There are a lot of courses in these areas meaning some creativity was needed to fit them all in. We managed to acheive this with a combination of two insets and some font size chicanery.
I was quite keen to include a journey time guide - so if you were trying to get from Troon to Dornoch in a day you would know what you were letting yourself in for! A couple of hours on Google maps was time well spent and Val produced a lovely looking table that sits at the side of the map.
You probably won’t be too interested in the mechanics of the printing process, distribution and pricing strategy. Luckily for me, lots of people have been generous with their time and have pointed me in the right direction - a big thanks to them!
And so, one bright morning at the end of February a cheery man from Glasgow turned up with a lot of boxes containing fresh new copies of The Golf Course Map of Scotland.
I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. I hope people will find it helpful when planning a trip to Scotland. You can buy a copy from me here. Postage and packing to the UK is free, and only £3 to the rest of the world!
So thanks to @drakeydistiller for the Tweet. I hope you’re happy with your map!
