Team effort helps revive island club

Staff and volunteers hailed as historic city golf course back in action after flood scare

- JAMIE BEATSON

A unique Perthshire golf course devastated by a massive flood has been rescued - thanks to a £75,000 repair job and a “Herculean” effort by its members.

King James VI Golf Club, designed by legendary course architect Old Tom Morris, is located on Moncrieffe Island in Perth, and is believed to be the world’s only self-contained inland island golf course.

But the historic course - opened in 1897 - was inundated with water and debris in October 2023 after Storm Babet ripped a 120 foot-wide hole in the island’s flood defences.

The bulk of the island was left under three feet of water, with only the flags visible on some holes.

Even after the water receded, only nine holes were left playable for more than six months - with two in particular buried under tons of silt washed on shore from the River Tay.

Staff feared that if the floodbanks couldn’t be properly repaired it could close the club completely or make the reinstatement of the original Old Tom Morris layout impossible.