May the heart, soul and intellect of Castle Stuart's greens and surrounds be absorbing and a source of engaging consideration to all golfers.
Machrihanish Dunes
In Scotland, true links golf courses are not created, they are born of the land. More than 130 years ago 'Old Tom' Morris recognised the potential for great golf here in this rugged, romantic corner of Scotland when he said, 'The Almichty maun hae had gowf in his e'e when he made this place.'
Today another Scot, David McLay Kidd, with the same professional eye and the same sense of place has been entrusted with this unique and precious landscape to mould it into the Machrihanish Dunes Golf Club.
When Machrihanish Dunes Golf Club opens in May 2009, it will be the first golf course to have been built on a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSi) since the days of "Old Tom" himself. It will also be the first 18-hole links golf course to be built on the west coast of Scotland in 100 years. Set hard against the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, Machrihanish Dunes shares breathtaking views with the adjacent Machrihanish Golf Club links laid out by "Old Tom" Morris in 1879, one of Scotland's classic and most revered links. Measuring 7,300 yards, Machrihanish Dunes will also feature six greens and five tees at the ocean's edge.
The two courses along with the creation of new luxury accommodations will provide an even more compelling reason to seek out Machrihanish Dunes. Within a 35-mile radius lie five of the world's greatest links golf courses. Four have hosted the Open Championship while the fifth is ranked amongst the most beautiful golf courses in the world. Turnberry, Prestwick and Royal Troon in Scotland, Royal County Down in Ireland and Royal Portrush, the only Irish golf course ever to host the Open Championship, are all less than an hour away.
At Machrihanish Dunes, golfers will also be able to relax and unwind in the Clubhouse (scheduled to open in 2010). Distinctively Scottish in design, the Clubhouse will have its own restaurant and pub along with men's and women's locker rooms.
Machrihanish Dunes promises to be the world's next great golf experience. One that beckons those with a deep passion and true respect for the roots of the game. One that is naturally born of the land and yet, has been molded to extract its most superb attributes. One that instantly takes your breath away with its majestic beauty; along with its prolific challenges. One that offers a vast and wondrous links land that is centuries old, to be enjoyed for centuries to come.
Machrihanish Dunes. The way golf began—and where the ancient traditions of the game continue .
When Machrihanish Dunes Golf Club opens to the public in May 2009, it will be the first golf course to be have been built on a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSi) since the days of "Old Tom" himself. It will also the first 18-hole links golf course to be built on the west coast of Scotland in 100 years.
Set hard against the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, Machrihanish Dunes shares breathtaking views with the adjacent Machrihanish Golf Club links (ranked 44th by Golf Digest's "Top 100 Courses Outside the U.S.").
True to The Way Golf Began, the site of Machrihanish Dunes links featured 23 "natural holes" (definition: a hole which fits so well into the natural landscape prior to construction that only minimal effort is required to ready it for play in terms of grading and shaping work ). Course architect and Scotsman David McLay Kidd, who is internationally acclaimed for his design of Bandon Dunes in Oregon and the The Castle Course at St. Andrews, chose his 18 favourites to make up the inspired routing for Machrihanish Dunes. Measuring 7,300 yards, Machrihanish Dunes will also feature six greens and five tees at the ocean's edge.
"We followed the lie of the land and unlike most courses around the world, we did not lay out the course and make the land change with it, we designed each hole around the natural terrain," says David McLay Kidd. "For maintenance we will do a little mowing, but will mostly rely on the wandering sheep to keep the fescue in check - just like the old courses used to do. We are returning golf to how it should be played; no longer is it a gentle walk in a garden, it will be a full-fledged mountaineering expedition at this course."
In a world with over 32,000 golf courses, the development of an authentic links course (there are only 270 in the world) on the west coast of Scotland is most unique. Machrihanish Dunes promises to be a true testament to The Way Golf Began .
Castle Course, St Andrews
The Castle Course, St. Andrews, Scotland (Public)
David McLay Kidd won the coveted design commission to build a seventh course at St. Andrews and was soon beset by fears that the links he produced would bore people. 'I hammered that point into my mind,' the Scotsman recently admitted. 'Lived by it, and repeated the sentiment like an army drill to my team' ... They got the message. Kidd's shapers transformed every inch of a derelict 220-acre potato farm on the outskirts of town into the Castle Course, a faux links with features so wild they seem to move before your eyes. Tumbling, hazard-studded fairways make every tee shot an adventure. The greens have to be seen - make that played - to be believed.
In avoiding dullness, Kidd fomented controversy. Some early reviews called the course unduly difficult, citing a couple of heavily contoured greens as over the top and declaring certain hole locations all but inaccessible. Even more criticized are the hard-edged, marram-grassed banks placed willy-nilly around many of the fairways (a feature Kidd employs at another course on this year's list, Tetherow). Golfers who hit long drives down the centerline aren't entitled by law to clean lies, but they probably don't deserve to lose their balls, either. Still, Kidd's shag-topped fairway bumps aren't deal breakers—not when a few guys with mowers could resolve the issue in an afternoon.
Any flaws the course may have are far outweighed by its strengths. First, the routing is excellent, with each nine-hole loop reaching a dramatic crescendo at the edge of the cliffs. Occupying a mile or more of coastline, the Castle serves up exquisite views of the North Sea and the Auld Grey Toon. Second, the shaping is skillfully rendered, in the mode of Kingsbarns and Bayonne: This links will only look finer as time softens it. Third, although destined to be known as the toughest course in town, the Castle is great fun to play. The holes are consistently creative and impressively diverse. Only the most jaded of golfers would not enjoy pulling driver on the short, downhill par-four ninth and blasting a shot toward land's end. Only a timid soul would shrink from the chasm-crossing test at the seventeenth. A modern blockbuster through and through, the Castle is in many ways the polar opposite of the Old Course down in the village, but they share one essential trait: You never forget where you are.
Features on Famous Scottish Courses
Kingsbarns
In the eighth decade of the 18th Century, at the same time as the Thirteen States were declaring their independence and the Constitution of the United States was scripted, the Merchants and Lairds of Kingsbarns drafted articles to form the Kingsbarns Golfing Society.
Golf has been enjoyed over the links land of Kingsbarns beginning in 1793. Attired in their blue coats, the Kingsbarns men met for their Spring and Autumn Meetings to challenge for the Societies medals on the links and to enjoy the conviviality of friends over dinner in the Golfers Hall. The Society continued to wager, wine and dine for decades until the Cambo Estate tenant farmer ploughed up the Links in 1850 in order to add to his farmable area. Farm land in that period was more valuable than land set aside for golf.
Prompted and inspired by Lady Erskine of Cambo, the old Kingsbarns Golfing Society was re-established and founded as Kingsbarns Golf Club in 1922 and Willie Auchterlonie laid out a nine-hole course on the links about Kingsbarns Bay . This course served the golfing needs of the locals and holidaymakers until the onset of the Second World War when the Links was mined in the national security defence effort and it quickly reverted to rough pasture.
Golf was resurrected on Kingsbarns Links at the dawning of the 21 st Century. The only Scottish course to be built on links land in over 70 years and with its seaside setting, Kingsbarns joined the great old courses of nearby St Andrews and Carnoustie, bringing with it a new dimension to the traditional Scottish game.
Gleneagles
The King's Course, opened in 1919, is a masterpiece of design, which has tested the aristocracy of golf, both professional and amateur.
James Braid's plan for the King's Course was to test even the best players' shot-making skills over the eighteen holes.
You find out all about it with your first approach shot. If you have driven straight and long from the tee, you will have what looks like a simple pitch to the elevated green. But you must be sure to select the correct club, because the shot is always a little longer than you think, with the wind over the putting surface often stronger than you can feel it from the fairway. And if you do not make the severely sloping green, a bunker yawns twenty feet below.
Selecting the right club for each approach shot is the secret on the King's. It is certainly one of the most beautiful and exhilarating places to play golf in the world, with the springy moorland turf underfoot, the sweeping views from the tees all around, the rock-faced mountains to the north, the green hills to the south, and the peaks of the Trossachs and Ben Vorlich on the western horizon.
All the holes have evocative and pithy Scots names. For example, the fifth, "Het Girdle" (Hot Pan), is a challenging par 3 with trouble every-where except on the green, while 17th's name, "Warslin' Lea" (Wrestling Ground), reflects the difficulty so many golfers have had with this long, sweeping par 4.
Learn about The Hidden Gems
Fraserburgh
Club History
Golf is first documented as having been played at Fraserburgh in 1613 when the Parish Kirk Session records refer to a young lad named John Burnett who was chastised for "playing at the gouff" on a Sunday instead of going to church. He was ordered by the Session to be sent to the 'maister's stool for correction'.
Following receipt of documents from the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh it has been firmly established that the Fraserburgh Golf Club was founded on 14th April 1777 and that the membership consisted of nineteen of the most prominent "landed gentry" in the north-east of Scotland.
According to the display boards in the British Golf Museum, StAndrews, Fraserburgh Golf Club is the 5th oldest club in Scotland and the 7th oldest in the World. Fraserburgh Golf Club would appear to be the oldest golf club in the World still operating under its original name.
Regular challenge matches were played throughout the 1800s against local rivals Inverallochy/Cairnbulg and inter club matches are documented between Fraserburgh and Peterhead in the 1850s.
The original course was nine holes played on the "public commonty" (Fraserburgh Links) but due to congestion, danger to the public and constant interruption the Club, thanks to the generosity of the then Lord Saltoun, moved approximately half a mile south to its present location at Philorth Links in 1891.
The course was redesigned in 1922 by the five times Open Champion James Braid and much of his design remains to this day.
Following the disasterous fire in March 2004 the clubhouse was totally destroyed and with it all of the Club's past records and documentation. Work is in hand to replace some of these records but research is likely to take several years. It was only in 2006, that this research unearthed the documents of 1777 in the National Library of Scotland.
After two years of voluntary work by many of the members the new clubhouse opened in May 2006 by the Rt Hon. Alex Salmond MP the present First Minister for Scotland and recently elected Hon. Vice-President of Fraserburgh Golf Club. Being two storey, it offers panoramic views over both the 18 hole Corbiehill championship course and the comparatively new Rosehill course.
Musselburgh Old Course
The Course Title
The Oldest Playing Golf Course in the World - The Cradle of Golf
Watercolour of Mrs Forman's Gate by Etta Shade
Historians uncovered the earliest record of golf being played on any surviving golf course from an account book kept by Sir John Foulis of Ravelston in 1672 'he lost at golfe at Musselburgh, £3.05.0 - No other course in existence can claim this title.
Following the demise of her unruly husband, Lord Darnley, Mary, Queen of Scots was arrested in 1567 at Seton House, just a few miles along the coast. She had been implicated in plotting with those who lit the fuse that blew up his Edinburgh home, with him still inside! It was noted on the indictment she went to Seton to play golf. This would most probably have been at Musselburgh. King James VI of Scotland, later to be James I of England, was also reported to have played here.
We cannot know how the course was then set out as no records survive. But we do know how the course developed from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Old Links had seven holes, with The 'Home Hole' added in 1832 and the final hole, 'Hole Across' created in 1870. Today some changes occurred in 1985 with the shortening of 'Barracks Entry' and again in 1996 with a new 'Gas' hole being introduced. The course was lengthened slightly at this time.
The first three holes stretched eastward from the racecourse grandstand, which incidently doubled as the former clubhouse of the Honorable Company until 1868. To the right is the main traffic route to which golfers would often slice their shots. They would play back to the links using the new brass-soled clubs designed by Musselburgh club makers for this purpose (commonly known as a 'brassie'). At the now, fourth green still stands Mrs. Foreman's Inn. Through a hatch in the wall refreshments were passed to the early golfers. The hatch still exists but legislation prevents its use for the modern golfer.
The course turns northwest with the short hole playing back towards the sea. The next three holes follow the coastline and the last hole returns south towards the grandstand. The 'Home Hole' has now become the first after the course alterations in 1996.
A Very Interesting Fact
Why is the size of the hole four and a quarter inches? Prior to 1893 holes on golf courses could vary in size. It all depended upon where you played. The Musselburgh hole had been cut since 1829 with a converted piece of drain pipe and the diameter of the hole cut was four and a quarter inches. This standard was adapted by the Royal & Ancient Golf club in 1893 when they began the business of standardizing the rules of golf. So, next time your putt lips out, you can now blame Musselburgh for not having wider drain pipes!
Dalmunzie
Dalmunzie golf course is among Britain's highest and is enveloped by stunning mountain scenery. The views in all diections are simply superb and can justify even a bad round! The course was introduced for the personal use of Sir Archie Birkmyre and his family and friends in 1922.
It's design is open to some conjecture and concerns two of Scotland's greatest golf architects. Dr Alastair MacKenzie of Augusta National fame and his contemporary James Braid of Gleneagles fame. They have both been put forward as the designers. It is possible both were involved as Dr Mackenzie designed the nearby prestigious course of Rosemount (then Lansdowne) in the early 1920's and James Braid the re-design of Rosemount in 1930. Dalmunzie's golf course probably being worked on by the two men in question at the same time.
Although only 9 holes and par 30 for gents, the course is deceptively difficult. It is sure to satisfy low & high handicappers alike and a small discussion of it's challenges follows.
The 1st tee is less than 50 yards from Dalmunzie's entrance and with a 234 yard par 3 across the burn, it will daunt even the best players. The burn stays on the right for the full length of the fairway and plays into the prevailing wind from Glenlochsie. The fairway is cunningly wedge shaped trying to tempt you to play short and hope for the best from your wedge. The safest option is to allow a margin of safety by staying leftish, but here you have a small dyke to contend with, several trees and if short the burn will be at the back of the hole....If you can par this hole congratulations.
The 2nd 140 yard par 3 plays south towards Ben Earb along the top of a hill dyke. A small forest to the right of the green is to be avoided, whilst the left of the green slopes sharply down the hill. This can be tricky when the wind (as is normal) is blowing right to left.
The 3rd hole is a deceptive 354 yard par 4. You tee off the elevated hill dyke into the valley below and then need to gain the hill dyke at the far end where the green is situated. A ball into the rough on the right of the fairway is as good as lost whilst there is a hidden burn at the end of the fairway to be avoided. The shot to the green is very difficult for first-timers as you are playing relatively blind steeply uphill.
The 4th hole is a notoriously tricky 162 yard par 3. You are playing along the edge of a ridge so stay right at all times. The left of the fairway and rear of the green are to be avoided at all costs as it slopes steeply into long rough. The view in the distance here is spectacular as you look down Glenshee.
The 5th is the picture perfect postcard hole with Dalmunzie framed magnificently behind the greenand Glen Taitnaich beyond. The green is Dalmunzie's most impressive as you play a 160 yard par 3 with just a small amount of fairway on the left if you're wayward. Depending on the breeze, this hole can be played with anything from a 3 to an 8 iron! Short or right in Summer means a nice walk through metre high grass. The only ball you will find will probably be someone else's.
Enjoy the view from the 6th tees raised mound as it might be the last thing you enjoy for awhile! This 450 yard par 4 plays every inch into the prevailing wind. Firstly you will be happy just to get down onto the fairway which is 150 yards away (burn on the right). Secondly you have to negotiate an increasingly wedge shaped fairway until you reach the green. Oh, and don't go over the green as you will visit Lochsie burn. A very tough hole to par even for the low handicappers.
It would be nice to have a small recovery period after the 6th but unfortunately you have to face the 7th. At first glance this 116 yard par 3 should be a doddle, but then you notice the fast flowing Lochsie burn directly in front of the green. With no margin of safety to the left, right or behind the green, some players refer to this hole as the postage stamp!
A walk up hill and then down brings you to a separate part of the course directly below Dalmunzie. The 8th should be a straight forward 162 yards par 3 except for the huge tree directly in front of the green! Going long and over doesn't help as the road is just behind the green. Best bet here is to punch an iron, but be aware of conditions. The fairway can be notoriously damp after rain and your ball WILL plug.
The final hole is a 320 yard dog leg right par 4. Going long is dangerous as you have the burn on your left and a large bog on the right at the end of your range. The fairway at this length is extremely narrow. The best option is to play a strong iron or 5 wood slightly short and then cut the corner with a short iron. Watch out for the tarred tennis court just to the left of the green or you will see your ball spectacularly bounce.
You are now ready for a break and many players take advantage of our Bar meals between rounds. It is not unknown during the long days of Spring and Summer to play 9 holes on either side of lunch and dinner in the one day (36 holes in all!).
Visitors are most welcome, booking is not necessary, but advisable for parties of more than 4. Handicap certificates are not required but it is expected that all golfers look after the course and abide by "the rules of golf". There is also equipment available for hire.
Find out how to get onto our famous course
2010 Old Course
The course should elicit anticipation and hopefulness in players of all skill levels; let it test one's perceptual ability, judgment, decision-making, shotmaking, and emotional poise; let it not be difficult for the sake of being difficult, rather let it be interesting and engaging. 
Tullibardine Distillery nestles at the foot of the Ochil Hills in Perthshire, where the Highlands of Scotland begin. These hills are renowned for the crystal purity of their spring water. 
