TEMPUS Magazine redefines time, giving you a glimpse into all things sophisticated, compelling, vibrant, with its pages reflecting the style, luxury and beauty of the world in which we live. A quarterly publication for private aviation enthusiasts.
Issue link: http://tempus-magazine.epubxp.com/i/131305
W WHEN ONE CONSIDERS THE HISTORICAL context, playing the aerial game into Campbeltown is no small thing. Over the years, nearly as much ink has been spilled over how absurdly diffcult it is to reach the Machrihanish Golf Club in Kintyre as over the greatness of Old Tom Morris's handiwork itself. In British Golf Links, an 1897 tome that's considered by many to be golf's frst-ever coffee-table book, Horace Hutchinson devotes nearly half of his review of Machrihanish to the journey, which in those days was most effciently made by boat—at length, Hutchinson details the complex process of loading terrifed horses onto steamships, the fve hours at sea, the tedium of the drive by "machine" past "remarkably fne crops of ragweed," and so on. In due course, though, Hutchinson found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. "To visit the links will be our frst care," he wrote, "seeing that we have come with that end in view. Nor shall we have roamed over them very long without endorsing to the full the remark of Tom Morris…that Providence assuredly designed that part of the country as a special earthly Paradise for golfers." The effect upon arriving in the village remains unchanged today. The main drag runs right past the frst tee of the Machrihanish Golf Club, where the temptation to hit the links is nearly unbearable. At one of the world's greatest opening holes, the drive plays across a sweeping crescent of beach with Atlantic whitecaps breaking in the middle distance. With the fairway set on the diagonal, the golfer is faced with a classic "bite off as much as you can chew" scenario, one that's complicated by two ever1. changing factors: the wind, and his own confdence level on the 2. very frst swing of the round. This compelling links has always been the top drawing card, but a better barometer of the area's well-being can be found across the street at the historic Ugadale Hotel, which 1. The Atlantic Ocean lies just beyond the fairway. 78 Tempus-Magazine.com . Summer 2013