Club History

The famous professional Tom Morris of St Andrews, always dubbed Old Tom to distinguish him from his unfortunate son, was called in to survey the land and with the usual hard-headed self-interest of the Victorian professional golfer, declared it excellent for the purpose.

history1Things moved quickly in those days and by March 1893 the Club was formally constituted with Nicol P. Brown as Captain. Two months later came the official opening by the then Laird of Achenames, Hugh R. G. Craufurd, of the nine-hole course which had a modest wooden shed for clubhouse out by the present third green.

The course did not grow to conventional size until April 1905 by which time a new and much-improved clubhouse had been commissioned and occupied.  From the beginning the Club suffered from having two and sometimes three landlords which worked against acquiring ownership of the course, ...............................................................something which would give the Club considerable concern.

 

history2By the outbreak of World War One, the Club was well established in the ranks of Ayrshire golfers, being especially attractive to military people and civil servants back on extended leave from the colonies. From the very beginning there had been a flourishing Ladies’ section and it was one of their number who first put the Club on the national map in 1913. 

Jean McCulloch won the Scottish Ladies’ championship while still in her teens. It was the start of an astonishing career which would see her national champion twice more, a career in which she would win the West of Scotland Championship 40 years after her first national success and live to attend the 75th anniversary dinner of that win at Machrihanish in 1913. In addition her encouragement to Ladies’ Golf, in particular Girl’s Golf was to be a life long commitment.

The war of 1914 cost the Club heavily in casualties, thirty members either lost their lives or were so severely incapacitated as to be prevented from playing anymore.  The Club suffered a grievous loss with the death in action of an outstanding green keeper, Robert Hunter.  W. Kilbride managed to hang on through the War and to resist attempts to be taken over wholly or in part by the War Department, between the two wars there was of course great social change. 

The clubhouse had to be extended to accommodate a bar, this with Sunday opening came surprisingly late to West Kilbride, not until the late 1930’s.  A car-park too was built as the motor car became an everyday means of transport rather than a crowd-gathering rarity.  A young man named Sandy Sinclair was beginning to give evidence of his considerable talent in the years immediately preceding 1939.  He would go on to become a top-flight international golfer and later one of the game’s administrators.  He was destined to fill the onerous roles of Walker Cup Selector and Captain of the R. and A. and he shared Jean McCulloch’s concern for the rising generation of golfers.

The Second World War saw a desperate struggle by those older members left at home to keep the course in being at a time when a wrong decision could easily have led to it’s temporary or even permanent closure.  Peter Macnab has written cogently about those dark days. Shortly after the return to peace-time conditions it became evident that in J. H. Morrison – Jock Morrison  - the Club possessed not only a long-hitter but a phenomenal hitter.  He was very long indeed even by the most exacting professional standards. 

Professional golfers were now appearing with regularity at West Kilbride, notably Bobby Locke in 1951.  Interestingly, they could have had the great Walter Hagen as far back as the 1930s but agreement could not be reached on the amount of his fee and so to the present day with a gratifying number of talented young players of both sexes coming through the ranks.  The Ladies have done well in the taxing Greenlees Trophy, a competition for club sides, and increasingly the Club has played host to important championships. 

The British Girls’ Championship was first played there in 1954 and since then the Pringle Seniors, the Scottish Girls and Scottish Boys, and more exotically, the One-Armed Golfers’ Championship have all taken place on the narrow coastal strip of turf that is West Kilbride Golf Club.  The Scottish Boys’ has unfortunately been cursed with vile weather during its recent sojourn at West Kilbride to the extent that a word association test for the youngsters which included the words West Kilbride might well evoke the response “monsoon”.

For most of the members golf is not a matter of championships, but rather a friendly foursome with the cheerful male insults or the Ladies with their scrupulous adherence to the Rules of Golf. A blessing indeed to have the thousand faces of Arran as a backdrop and the knowledge that a topped shot may be a case not so much as having lifted one’s head but rather of having obeyed the Psalmist who recorded, “I to the hills will lift mine eyes