Damage report: ‘Storm Éowyn caused severe devastation in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland on Friday,’ reported the news agency Agence France Press (AFP), for example. ‘Gale-force winds with record wind speeds of over 180 kilometres per hour uprooted trees, knocked down power lines and caused train and flight cancellations. In Ireland, a man was killed when a tree fell on his car, according to police reports. In total, almost a million households were temporarily without power.’ Und naturally, Éowyn also hit a lot of golf courses. The most prominent ‘victim’, for example, was the world’s most famous opening hole. On hole 1 of the Machrihanish Old Course on the Scottish peninsula of Kintyre, known as the Battery, where a cut in the Atlantic Ocean has to be played over from the tee, the storm drove the sea inland and flooded the fairway. Until further notice, the round therefore begins with hole two.
There are also documents of destruction from other places; the comments speak for themselves:
It remains to be seen what further damage will be reported – especially in terms of coastal erosion, which by its very nature affects link courses in particular.