North Berwick is a Genesis Scottish Open tradition for pros: There's a new charity fighting to save it

The World Number One playing a few holes on a Wednesday evening before a tournament, on a different golf course from the one upon which he is about to compete, is not something you ever see. North Berwick Golf Club is the exception.

While The Renaissance Club takes centre stage for this week's Genesis Scottish Open, North Berwick shares in the spotlight in the earlier part of the week.

It is one of the oldest clubs in the world, an irreplaceable and iconic part of the fabric of Scotland’s golf coast, but with coastal erosion threatening parts of the course, the club has launched a new charity - named the North Berwick West Sands Coastal Erosion Charity  - to help safeguard its future.

There’s a lot of joy in experiencing a true links test at the 13th oldest golf club in the world, and what started organically from a couple of different players when the tournament moved to East Lothian has turned into a ritual for others.

It evolved naturally. Rickie Fowler talked about enjoying the course after making his way quietly there on Monday of the 2018 event at Gullane, but it wasn’t until Max Homa played on Friday afternoon after making the cut in 2022 that it started to become incredibly popular. From there, it snowballed. Over the last four years, the world’s best have been spotted teeing up at North Berwick alongside family, friends and interacting with locals, from Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth to Scottie Scheffler and many others in between. Chris Gotterup played last year ahead of his victory, and was back again this week after claiming another PGA TOUR win at the weekend.

Last year, 27 professionals made the trip to the West Links, and this year the number was roughly the same. That’s just over one‑sixth of the field choosing to play another golf course during one of the biggest events of the year.

Yet storms over the past few years have caused dreadful damage to the course, and it’s a tradition North Berwick Golf Club is determined to protect. The new charity aims to ensure the West Links remains a place players can continue to visit for a true links warm‑up, as well as a reminder of the history and character that make the course so distinctive.

We spoke to General Manager Stuart Bayne and Course Manager Kyle Cruickshank about the tradition that has developed around the Genesis Scottish Open, the crises they are facing, and why they’ve created a charity to help combat them.

A trip to North Berwick has become a staple for some players every time they come to The Renaissance Club for the Genesis Scottish Open. How did it start?

KC: No Laying Up did their video in 2018, I think the Scottish Open was at Gullane. Rickie Fowler was there the same day, so they filmed it, and he hit his drive on 18 to the fence line, they had to be like under a car, and that's kind of where a lot of players first became aware of North Berwick.

SB: Max Homa also came out and played on a Friday night when he thought he was on the cusp of making the cut in 2022. He went out there, played, loved it, and he actually played on Saturday, and I think he got interviewed and said, 'look, I just loved it'. And from there it just snowballed.

What do you think the draw to the course is for the pros?

SB: It's a traditional links golf course, so we're bounded by seas and properties. We can't push tees further back, nor would we really want to, but it's got some tremendous topography through there. Kyle keeps it in phenomenal condition. So they're playing greens and fairways that are running hard and fast like they play elsewhere, and they're going to get lies, sloping lies, downhill lies, shots that a links golf course throws at you.

We've got so many of those iconic holes out there that are template holes that world‑famous golf course architects have taken to the US and further afield.

It's a bit like going to see a world heritage site or something, because we've got holes that have been copied around the world. So we're trying to protect them and look after them in such a way.

But when people read about that and they're on the doorstep and go, actually, I want to go and see the real Redan and Pit and Perfection, we're so lucky to look after those things. And I think that's part of the attraction and desire to go down and play as well. Our teams that work at the club as well, they love this week as well.

Who has visited this year?

SB: Daniel Hillier this year ties into coastal erosion and also the fun that North Berwick is. 14, ‘Perfection’, was downwind, so normally you probably know that's a lay-up over the bunkers and then the reveal is you come over the top of the hill and it's a wonderful kind of landscape. He bombed driver, carried everything down the green, but over the coastal erosion defences onto the beach. And I guess if the coastal erosion wasn't there, it'd have been down a sheer face and wouldn't be able to play it as it once was. But then middle of the beach, opens up the face, pops it on the green, holes putt, takes a hole away from Ryan Fox, high fives and moves on to the next.

It's like when they were kids almost, before they turned pro. They don't get a chance to do that because every week they're going somewhere and it's almost like taking them back to when they're juniors and just saying 'actually I'm just going to go and play a loop and push my trolley around' and it's great.

You mentioned coastal erosion. There is a sign on the 14th tee that reads ‘Coastal erosion: Please help to protect our coastline and avoid danger by keeping away from the unstable dunes’. North Berwick lost part of the third tee, and the 14th during Storm Babet, as well as some of the putting green in the town. What happened?

KC: In 2023, it started with Storm Babet, and then it felt like pretty much every week after it was just another storm, high tide, storm, high tide. It kept taking more and more of the coastline away. So I was away down in England, a networking thing, got a phone call to say we've had a bad storm. Came back up and we had an AGM the following day. The first question was like, 'what's happening? How are you going to protect us? What are you doing to stop it?'. It's like, it's mother nature, we can't stop this, but we need to look ahead to what we can do to protect it.

We had part of the third tee disappear, but that became a real point where the club said, 'look, it's a number one priority, we need to do something'.

What did you then do?

SB: We started to understand a bit more about coastal erosion, worked with some really good professional partners in EnviroCentres, our environmental consultant. Professor George Fleming as the expert in coastal erosion came, walked the coastline, had a look at the different options that we could go in, and we landed on a solution which was some original gabion baskets we found buried in there from like 1950, 1960, which are incredible, big stone‑filled baskets. So we were able to say actually these were ones put in there and have lasted a good 50, 60 years, so how could we replicate them with something new and modern. So we ended up dropping in the gabion baskets, which is basically like putting a line in the sand and holding the line.

We worked with the guys at NatureScot and the countryside team at East Lothian Council to make sure we could do it in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. So we decided to sand‑cap them, which is a bit of a task, and then plant marram grasses and sea lyme on top. So the biodiversity is there, the aesthetics for the important landscape are there, and anybody using the beach can still walk up and down and be none the wiser. It's robust and resilient against storms, and Kyle's done a great job shaping some of that so it looks as natural as it once was.

We've now got engineering on the third and the 14th, and we actually decided to engage with Gil Hans, the course architect, as our retained course architect, to look at how we polish and protect the golf course. So Gil's going to work with Kyle on fairway lines, presentation, to really make sure the West Links is as good as it can be, while also protecting the coastline at the same time.

Are there changes you are planning to make to the course, and contingencies in place?

KC: Probably the routing wouldn't change, but greens would be bigger, fairways would be wider, bunker placement might move, might get bigger, might be pulled in a little bit more. They just visited last week for the first time, so we’re very much at the preliminary stages.

Tell me about the charity and its purpose?

SB: We've set up this charity, which is about protecting that dunescape. It's protecting the golf course for the members and everyone that loves golf, but it's also for the people that use the beach, the town, the community, all the biodiversity stuff that comes with it as well.

We launched it this week and we're just trying to spread the word that we know that people care about it. They come every year, and if we don't do something about it, it might not be here in years to come.

Kyle and I are only custodians for a short period in the long history of the club. How, when we both retire, the next GM and course manager has a plan they can pull out the draw that says, if something happens, Gil Hans is going to do this. You know, we've put defences in place, great, but if something else happened there's a fund, there's a foundation in place that can actually be used to protect the golf course going forward. So it's about giving that for future generations.

What is the current plan for the North Berwick West Sands Coastal Erosion Charity?

SB: We've done some work right now on, as I say, on 14th tee, 13th green. We're going to look at protecting this winter coming as well. But it doesn't stop. There's more to do. And I'm thinking about four, five, ten years ahead. And that's why we've launched the charity.

Initially, the scope of it goes from the tenth tee on the West Sands right down to the slip road by Elcho Green. So it goes into town as well. And that's really important because there's a phenomenal little putting green in town, which is used by everybody. It feels connected to the golf club because it touches it. They had some terrible erosion as well on that putting green. So we're looking to see how we can help support that. So if anything did happen there, that really valuable asset to town is still protected as well. So we're looking at all sorts from... education in schools and how we can bring people along. So that's really important.

In essence, it's there for the long term. It's not a quick hit, we need some money. North Berwick Golf Club, the West Links, is woven into the fabric of town. It's part of it. We're not far off 11,000 visitors that come through every year that stay in the local hotels and use the restaurants, so our economic impact to town is huge and we take that responsibility really seriously.

Find out more about the charity, and the story behind it all, here: North Berwick West Sands Coastal Erosion Charity