If a farmer builds a golf course, this is what might be par.
Price: £16. Par 36. CR 69.0, Slope 119.
Value: 3.5 / 5.
Moly’s Score: 45
In 1987, the UK Government launched the Farm Diversification Grant Scheme, to incentivise farmers to diversify; by the early 1990s courses began sprouting at a rate that may have startled Old Tom Morris. My own club, Isle of Wedmore in Somerset, was built in 1992 on Lineage Farm by Ken Abraham, using a standard hymn sheet – rolling agricultural land, modest construction budget, an unfussy layout, and a prayer that golfers would cover the mortgage.
Robert and Barbara Anderson did the same in 2004, converting their South Lanarkshire farm into the Broadlees Golf operation; range, 9-hole course, crazy golf, footgolf, academy, cafe and in 2021 a second very unusual addition (covered in Blog 186). They self-confidently named the course’s address “Anderson” Drive, Chapelton, after themselves!
The workmanlike hole names also gives insight to the Andersons; ‘Anderson’s Garage’, ‘Gas Works’, ‘Worker’s Way’, ‘Out the Moss’, ‘Old Road’ and ‘Five Acre’. The ‘Powmillon’ burn (hole 4) runs through well-heeled Strathaven a few miles to the south-east, whose own Golf Club has more bourgeois hole names.
The Andersons display good commercial instincts, no more so than with the ‘free’ laminated course guide (see above). For a pay-and-play operation of this scale it is more than you expect, and much better than many established member clubs that charge several times the greenfee.
What you might get when a farmer builds a golf course on a limited budget is, I think, what you get here. The bones are reasonable at around 3000 yards, a par 36 with two par fives and two par threes. The par-five 4th (Powmillion, 479 yards) and the par-five 7th (Over the Burn, 456 yards) give the round depth. Water features on some holes, including a pond at the 2nd and a burn that winds its way around the 7th green, retained by a rustic timber revetted bank. Bunkering is sufficient, but was unraked when I played.
The central challenge with designing a course on open farmland, such as Broadlees, is framing. Well framed holes visually present a picture using trees, contour, rough, bunkers, water and elevation. This skill is epitomised by the Camoufleur Alister MacKenzie, whose work can be seen at Pitreavie (Dunfermline) see blog 150. At Broadlees, fairways unceremoniously bleed into rough. The trees planted are still young; scrub and rough areas are unformed; the contours, while present, have not yet sharpened. I hope the Anderson family get to see Broadlees mature.
The greens are the strongest element. True, consistent and well-presented on a late-March morning when much of the course was still very wet. However, the claim that they rank among the finest putting surfaces in Lanarkshire is bold, and nowhere near the truth in my opinion.
The two wind turbines deserve a mention as they are visible from most holes and dominate the final green. They present a reminder that Broadlees is a commercial enterprise built by farmers who needed multiple revenue streams from a single property. The turbines, golf course, cafe, Santa’s grotto. Each a response to the same challenge – making a small rural business pay in a Scottish golf landscape where established member clubs and council-owned courses provide stiff, and often quietly subsidised, competition.
At £16 for nine holes, Broadlees is cheap, and relatively good value. Within a few miles, South Lanarkshire golfers have many choices, so Broadlees needs to keep well below the competition fees, certainly until the course matures.
The Andersons, however, were not finished. In 2021, they added a second course — and this one was genuinely unlike anything else in Scotland. See Blog 186 to find out more.
Value: 3.5 / 5. The Andersons have built something from nothing and kept adding to it for twenty years. That deserves acknowledgement. But a golf course is not only measured by the effort that went into building it. The framing will come. It just wasn’t there yet. But at the price it’s good value.
Facts:
Course type: Parkland/Pasture
Par 36 (2 par 5s, 5 par 4s, 2 par 3s)
Distance: 2,954 yards (yellow tees)
Moly’s Gross Score: 45 (9 holes)
See also: Blog 186 — Broadlees Par 3 Golf Course
