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J.H. Arthur was the Consultant agronomist during the construction and early years of Southerness. He went on to be eminent in his field, being engaged by the R & A for many years to supervise the preparation of courses to be used for the Open Championship.
Here he shares his thoughts about Southerness.
" Southerness represents so many things to me personally and indeed to the game of golf that it is hard to know where to start. As a young advisor, straight out of the services, I benefited inestimably from the truly valuable education in golf course construction that it provided. It is hardly believable that when Major Oswald proposed to build the links, it was reported as being the last golf course likely to be built in Scotland! There have been a few since, but none surpassing not just Mackenzie Ross` superb design, but in its unspoilt surroundings and heathland between the wide sweep of the Solway with its Skyline of the Lake District peaks and the backdrop of Criffel.
Southerness has survived as a natural links where other courses have suffered almost a complete loss of links character due to chopping and changing of management policies. There have been many reason for this, one being that in the dicey days of the fifties and sixties when so many heretical ideas ere being promoted, initially to sell fertilisers, by those who should have known better, three factors stopped them being adopted at Southerness. The first was the continuity of direction rigidly imposed by Major Oswald. The second was a management policy based on traditional links methods, which with one or two lapses from grace continued to this day. The third was lack of money, which was a great limiting influence on the making of mistakes.
Two greenkeeping adages are proven by the excellence of Southerness when all around were succumbing to the "green is great" school greenkeeping. Firstly, that the poorest clubs have the best courses and second that in greenkeeping one should ask a farmer what to do and then go and do exactly the opposite.
Southerness to me represents the essential essence of links golf. I was there from the very start, and how rewarding it is to take on a course from the start, i.e. before it comes into play and especially, as so often has happened in the 50 intervening years, when one has to correct problems caused by someone messing things up because because they had not the slightest idea of the needs on those two fine grasses, fine fecue and bents ( Agrostis) which give top courses their character and indeed dominate the whole links at Southerness.
Thus Southerness provided the doubly valuable precedents by the development of Mackenzie Ross` architectural concepts with sound construction and first class traditional management. Its excellence on a shoe string made a big impression on some other Scottish courses who noted the philosophy and changed their management back to traditional lines. What a pity that Turnberry, being restored by Ross at same time, on sound lines, was nearly ruined by the deep purse of British rail, leaving me with a Herculean task in restoring links character to an annual meadow grass course in the run up to their first Open Championship. In the three years prior to the 1977 open ( the famous Niklaus v Watson dual in the Sun), by dint of literally monthly visits and a massive budget from the BTH, we succeeded in restoring some semblance of links character by emulating what was routine management a Southerness!.
Tom Watson, after his victory in 1977 at Turnberry
ŠI played a good deal of my early golf at Southerness, my recollection is that it cost 5/` for a days golf then, but holidays at the Paul Jones were not all golf. Listening to the myriads of natterjack toads talking to themselves in the still of a spring evening was something I will never forget. The flora of the heather and links land produced countless surprises, agronomists are often botanists at heart, while the bird life varied wildly with the season as I am certain it still does.
Certainly Southerness ranks high in my list of favourite courses. Many of them being links but all examples of how superb golfing conditions can be created by dedicated and skilled work, by devoted and hard working greenkeepers, without which golf would be a shadow of its traditional face and far less of a challenge."