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It’s Off To Iona, Laddie
It’s Off To Iona, Laddie
By Leonard Shapiro
On the second Friday of August, for most of the last 21 years, Bridge Littleton, the Mayor of Middleburg, Virginia, becomes an unofficial citizen of Scotland, specifically the tiny and historic island of Iona. It’s a windswept 4.5-square mile chunk of land, rock, sand and more than enough grass to feed the cows and sheep, who also serve as four-legged maintenance workers on a unique and challenging 18-hole golf course.
Littleton happily makes the trek every summer to play in the annual Iona Open, a jolly old one-day tournament open to all comers, men and women, boys and girls, low handicappers and hideous hackers from all over the world. It’s been around since the early 1960s, and Littleton has played in 19 of the last 21, missing the 2011 event when he had a cancerous tumor removed from a kidney and the second absence in 2020 forced by the Covid epidemic.
“It’s been so meaningful and important in my life,” said Littleton, 50, who has taken his father, Trowbridge, also a long-time Middleburg golfer, to play in several Iona Opens. “It’s the most enjoyable experience you can imagine, for a lot of reasons, especially the people of Iona.”
Getting there may be the hardest part of all. Littleton used air, auto and finally a ferry that left him on dry land off the southwest coast of the large island of Mull in the Inner Hebrides and about a mile from the first tee, also 140 miles from Edinburgh.
No one except permanent residents can have a car or truck on the island, which stretches three miles long and is 1.5 miles wide. Iona is separated from the Isle of Mull by the Sound of Iona and has a population of about 150 year-round. It’s also known as “The Cradle of Christianity” in Scotland and attracts 130,000 visitors each year.
Very few of them find their way to the golf course, a 4,600-yard par 66, with a half dozen holes that run up and down the spectacular Atlantic Ocean coast. Most tourists are there to visit this vibrant center of Christian worship ever since St. Columba arrived in 563 AD.
St. Columba’s monastery survived until the end of the 12th century, despite repeated Viking raids. Around 1200, the sons of Somerled– “King of the Isles” – founded a Benedictine abbey here. Pilgrimages to St. Columba’s Shrine continued to thrive, though monastic life on Iona ended with the Protestant Reformation of 1560. It’s believed the world famous Book of Kells was made here, along with other great works of art. Iona’s Abbey Museum houses Scotland’s finest collection of early medieval carved stones and crosses.
But back to the golf course, which has plenty of riveting history as well. The original nine holes on the west side of the island were laid out in 1886 by Allan MacBeth of Glasgow. Some 20 years later, the course was lengthened to 18 holes using property on the adjoining Culbhuirg Farm, owned by a professor at Glasgow University.
It was laid out on a type of land known as machair, a sandy, low-lying grassy plain by the sea that’s unique to the exposed west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. The Scotsman newspaper wrote in 1934 that the golf course had “turf second to none.”
They call it the Iona Golf Club, though there is no clubhouse on the property, no pro shop, no motorized golf carts or any other amenities. Then again, there are no greens fees, either. Everyone walks, and pull carts are available, also at no charge. There is no entry fee for the tournament itself, though donations from ten to twenty pounds are encouraged to help with the upkeep of the nearby abbey.
On the second Friday of every August, they play the Iona Open, using only the first 11 holes on the course. No handicaps are necessary. Players simply throw out their two worst holes, so only the best nine holes count. Modest prizes are awarded, including a not so coveted wooden spoon that goes to the worst score of the day.
Littleton, who grew up in Northern Virginia and has been Middleburg’s mayor since 2018, first learned about Iona and its golf course during his course work for law school at the University of Aberdeen. A fellow student introduced him to one of his friends, Finlay MacDonald, who’s father and grandparents were Iona natives. Like Littleton, he was an avid golfer himself.
MacDonald, who now lives there full time and is a boat captain, spent many summers on the island growing up and played in the Iona Open as a junior golfer. In 2002, Littleton traveled to Edinburgh to meet up with MacDonald and some of his old Scottish friends and took his golf clubs with him.
“I got there and it was a surprise—we were going up to Iona to play in a golf tournament,” he said. “There were four or five of us and I was there for about five days. Within the first ten minutes of being on the island, I fell in love with it. It’s a lot like Middleburg, a special place because of the people. You get there, and within half a day, you get it or you don’t. They immediately embrace you as if you’re part of the community.”
In 2015, Littleton served as captain of that year’s tournament, an honor that he said he’ll always cherish. He’s never won the event, but has had a few top ten finishes. Just as important, he has countless fabulous tales to tell about his experiences over the years.
No one will ever mistake Iona’s course conditions for the perfectly manicured fairways and greens at most American clubs. MacDonald, also the newly minted President of the Open, and several other island residents voluntarily do most of the maintenance on the course, with a little help from the cows and sheep who wander freely all around and occasionally chomp on the hole flags.
Putting is mostly an adventure, with golf balls more than occasionally bouncing away from the cup just before the lip. And in certain bunkers on the course, essentially truly natural beaches, if a player can’t get the ball back on green grass in three swings, they can drop in the fairway.
In the 2024 tournament, Littleton shot 39 for his best nine holes, and the winning score was 33. The tournament record for the best nine out of 11 holes is 29. The day after the event, he went out to the course with a friend, Rick Johnson, the owner of the Columba Hotel on the island, and they decided to play the tournament format—best nine of 11 holes.
Littleton started off with two bogies, then birdied four of the next six and added another at the ninth. On his 11th hole, he had a ten-foot putt for a par “and I missed it by an inch,” Littleton recalled.
“Rick falls to the ground and he says to me, ‘I can’t believe it. If you’d made that putt, you would have had the course record.’ I always keep a bottle of whiskey in my bag just in case someone I’m playing with breaks the course record or gets an ace. I definitely would have opened that bottle.”
And of course, he’ll definitely be back at Iona in August to celebrate his 20th year playing in the Iona Open.
“I tell people in Middleburg that you can always rebuild our town, but you can’t replace the people here,” he said. “Iona is the same. They are a wonderful, thoughtful, caring, and generous people and they welcome you with their hearts and into their homes. It’s just amazing. It’s my second family.”
This article originally appeared in Virginia Golfer Magazine, a publication of the Virginia State Golf Association.
