Ian takes over top position in national golf arena
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IN 1992 Tain Golf Club’s head greenkeeper, Iain MacLeod, was proclaimed by his peers as the best in Scotland.
And after a lifetime working as a greenkeeper, from next January he will reign for a year over the British golf green keeping fraternity as the president of the British and International Golf Greenkeepers Association (BIGGA).
Macleod, aged 58, will succeed one of Great Britain’s most distinguished golfers, Sir Michael Bonallack, who is standing aside as president to become a BIGGA patron.
In a change of structure Iain has already joined the BIGGA Board of Management when elected president elect recently, before taking on his full presidential role.
Life on or around golf courses began for Iain in 1972 when after leaving school he got an apprenticeship on Nairn golf course before leaving the north for Coventry.
He completed his apprenticeship on a small nine hole course where his father was the club vice-captain.
He returned north in 1976 joining Tain initially as depute head before becoming head greenkeeper where he has remained ever since and will have been with the Tain club 40 years next year.
Iain married his Nairn girlfriend Barbara in 1976 and they have a family of two boys and one girl. Claire is a schoolteacher in Glasgow but the sons, James and Ross, also have golf in their blood. Ross undertook a greenkeeping apprenticeship under his father at Tain but is now a professional and is a golf coach at the Clydeway Performance Centre near Glasgow.
James, a competent amateur at Tain, is now in America working in the Palm Desert area of California.
Although the role of head greenkeeper is now progressing to that of a manager with a lap top, Iain MacLeod still sees his daily role as “hands on” and out on the course with his staff.
But for decades he has always found time to put pen to paper for his association. He was the north section secretary and chairman and kept the BIGGA members fully up to date by way of his regular reports in their monthly magazine.
When recently visiting the Tain course at the end of a working day Iain was found at the wash bays hosing down his machinery for the next day’s cutting!
In his role as president he will have to
spend a little time away from Tain, but one such trip he is looking forward to next year is the Golf Industry Show being held in San Diego, when the opportunity will arise to catch up with James and his new wife Adela,
as he was unable to attend their recent wedding.
Looking forward to his year in office Iain said: “It’s a great honour and quite unexpected.
“I’ve been involved in BIGGA since the very start, and moving forward it’s become a more professional and well organised association and I want to help us to continue along that road.
“I have the 100% per cent backing of the Tain committee.
“And I would like to thank them and
everyone at the club for their continuing support.”
