RUNNING RIOT

With courses more vulnerable during lockdown, vandalism appears to be on the rise. Jeremy Ellwood finds out more

- Jeremy Ellwood

Bad things happen, lots of bad things. Golf course vandalism sits nowhere near the top of the list, but that doesn’t stop photos of deep tyre tracks on fairways and greens cutting to the heart of every golfer. Nobody has been hurt, but for whatever reason, or perhaps no reason, somebody has decided to wilfully harm our sacred turf.

Maybe it’s a false perception generated by lockdown and excessive time on social media, but there seems to have been more of it of late and the images are always distressing. All sorts of unprintable names are directed at the perpetrators, but when you look at what humankind has done throughout history, a few bored youths or someone with an axe to grind damaging a golf course sadly comes as no great surprise.

Professional events have even fallen victim. In the 1983 Open at Birkdale, the words ‘Dennis Kelly is innocent’ were gouged into one of the greens, and four greens were damaged overnight at Hilversum Golf Club in the Netherlands the day before the 2011 KLM Open.

Our opening image comes from a New Year’s Day tweet by a gentleman called Michael Marra. It’s actually a municipal course in Dundee called Camperdown that the local council voted 14-13 to close a year ago as part of ‘essential cuts’. Marra was one of the 13 to vote against closure.