Askernish Golf Club is home to “the most natural golf course in the world” (2011 visitor) and has been ranked 86 in GB&I's Top 100 Links Courses 2015.
The course and club has a long and almost mythical history. Old Tom Morris came to South Uist in 1891 to create a course at the request of the wealthy land owner, Lady Cathcart, so that she could impress her high society guests. Old Tom created an 18 hole course that was maintained by the local crofters until the early 1920s when the demand for golf declined and social pressures on the local people meant that maintaining the course was not viable.
Over the course of the next 80 years the course that Old Tom created was taken back by the wild. The land was kept as 12 holes, and 9 holes, and 9 holes with 18 tees, and was also used as an airstrip. In 2005 a group of locals decided that they wanted their course back and set to work, with the help of some of the golf industry’s biggest and best names, restoring this ’lost’ course. In 2008 the course was reopened as an 18 hole facility that has received the highest acclaim from golfing media and beyond.
