Ron Goudie lives next door to a distillery, can see the Irish coastline through the windows of his home and spends much of his time playing golf in a clement climate.
So asking why he chose to relocate from the south- east of England to Islay is akin to inquiring about the activities of bears in the woods.
“I didn’t need much arm-twisting,” admits the golf professional, reflecting on his first year on the inner Hebridean island after moving from Surrey.
The words may be delivered in estuary English but the sentiment is Scottish. Goudie is Glaswegian, having lived the first three years of his life in Bishopbriggs before the family moved south with his father’s work. An unlikely poster boy, perhaps, for the year of Homecoming, but there is no doubting the credentials of a man whose zeal for his nation is matched only by the enthusiasm he maintains for golf.
“It’s a tragedy for me that I’ve got an English accent,” he deadpans, childhood holidays in Scotland having failed to bolster his burr. “If you put the rugby on, there’s only one team I’m supporting. People have accused me of being English but if that was true I’d have had to kill myself.”
If you put the rugby on, there’s only one team I’m supporting. People have accused me of being English but if that was true I’d have had to kill myself. 
Ron Goudie
Not that his nationality matters much on Islay, where the population is split along simpler lines; either you’re a local or you’re not. Yet despite Goudie, wife Emma and son Alasdair falling into the latter camp, people in the south of the Argyll archipelago have quickly accepted the family as valued members of the community thanks to the 44-year-old’s efforts in bringing golf to the island.
This time last year, Machrie Golf Club barely had enough junior members for a fourball but now in excess of 35 kids regularly attend weekly coaching sessions as part of the nationwide clubgolf programme, which aims to create the opportunity for every nine-year-old in the county to play the game. While he is keen to praise the local support, the interest – which eclipses that received by most mainland clubs – has been fostered by the presence of Goudie, who has opened up his tutorials to all junior members.
That emphasis on youth is mirrored in the reasons behind the family’s relocation to the island. After spending 15 years as the professional at the club in Epsom where he learned the game at the age of seven, Goudie felt it was time to move on because as well as the business delivering diminishing returns, he was spending less and less time with his 11-year-old son.
Having been rejected for positions throughout the mainland at various times over the past few years – “There was always the problem that I didn’t sound like a Scot” – the family visited various towns on the west coast before alighting on Islay, which had not had a golf pro for many years. An earlier phone call had already established that the services of a PGA-qualified coach would be welcomed, albeit in a freelance capacity to work with hotel and corporate guests as well as club members, and within hours of arriving a decision was taken.
“We just knew because it had that special something,” Goudie explains. “We actually stayed in the house we now own, which was originally the excise office house for the Laphroaig distillery, so it’s right next door, on the rocks overlooking the sea. From where I’m standing I can see Rathlin Island and the Irish coast behind it so it’s little bit different from living cheek by jowl with thousands of others where we used to live in.”
Not that he’s entirely used to the remoteness yet. “It is a bit of a journey – two-and-a-half hours on a ferry and more than two hours drive from Glasgow to get to the ferry – then there’s the problem of not getting places because the ferry has been cancelled. That’s not something that crops up if you’re trying to go to Milngavie . . .”
Transport problems also briefly hindered Goudie’s most ambitious scheme, to take clubgolf to Colonsay. An island of just more than 100 inhabitants between Islay and Mull, the boat only runs on Wednesdays during the summer but the pro was determined that the kids should not miss out and travelled across for five of the six holiday weeks, with only the weather preventing him completing the set.
That can-do attitude is also prevalent in plans to turn their home into a bed & breakfast guest house, a move that will allow the family to earn a living and Goudie to pursue a peripatetic lifestyle as a self-employed coach. Emma, a qualified caterer and hotelier, will take charge – “I’ll be doing what she tells me, all the normal things a fella does” – while her husband continues to work on a game that has improved substantially now that he now longer has to worry about the committee meetings and paperwork that eroded the enjoyment of life as a club professional.
That, though, is not the height of his ambition. “The way I look at it is that the world is now my oyster and doors are opening up to me,” Goudie explains. “There’s only a finite number of kids on the island but I’d love to get them all involved and increase the membership at Machrie. Longer-term, a lot of people come to Islay for the whisky and bird watching but I’d like to make it a real destination for golf and if I keep knocking on doors, hopefully, one will open.”