Golf Books #152 (No Tie Required: Playing Golf without a Club)

No Tie Required is an entertaining journey across Britain, celebrating the wonderful, eccentric and historical public courses where no club membership is required. Not for Chris Cairns the member’s door and the pink gins of the 19th hole. Instead the author has sought out the country’s pay-and-play courses in order to experience how non-members get their golfing fix. Public course in Britain come in just about every shape and size.

From picturesque honest box courses in the Highlands, to converted potato fields in Essex and over-crowded city-parks in London. At all these courses there are regulars who play in all weathers and who are happy to tell their stories. Behind the author’s journey — apart from the joy of playing and sharing a pint or two with the locals — is the desire to trace the history of why the game’s origins have been so badly relegated in status.

Today a handful of highly exclusive private members clubs seem to dominate the image of golf. Is this justified? Or is the “them and us” approach a fiction in today’s Britain.

Publication date: June 6, 2005 (source)

About the Author

Chris Cairns is a freelance writer and journalist based in Edinburgh. He has also had numerous environmental pieces published in The Sunday Times, the Sunday Herald and trade magazines. Prior to going freelance, he was a news reporter and then environmental correspondent at The Scotsman. He began his journalistic career in English local and regional newspapers.