Category: James Braid (Page 1 of 11)

190. Irvine ‘Bogside’. 26 Apr 23.

August 28, 2026 / Moly McMillan

An Example of the Golf Market Leaving Normal Golfers Behind

Price Paid: £32 (via GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £125 (summer, May-Sep)
Value: 5/5 at price paid. 2/5 at current list price.

Tucked between the Ayrshire coastal railway line and the mouth of the River Irvine, this course is shadowed by more famous neighbours, giving an occasional opportunity for value.

**Fran facing the magnificent sleeper bunker at the 5th, “Sandface”.**

In 1887 Eglinton Estates leased land for a course to be built between the railway, the river, the village of Bartonholm and the ‘Bogside’ racecourse. The racecourse had opened in 1808 and from 1867 hosted the Scottish Grand National, but money ran out and the last meeting ran in 1965, with the Grand National moving south to Ayr. The 11th hole is called “Grandstand” although no remnants exist.

**Approach to the 11th “Grandstand”**; nothing remains of the racecourse grandstand.

The golf course is strategic fare. Willie Fernie, professional at Troon, made the first significant alterations after the original 1887 layout, and Harold Hilton surveyed the course in 1912. But much of what’s here now is Braid’s,including four entirely new holes (the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th) carved from land bought from the neighbouring farms and the Eglinton estate.

When we played, the turf was superb given how early in the year, with fast, subtle greens. Not every hole is tight, the 7th, The Cup, is as wide open as Bogside gets, a breather after the squeeze of the holes before it.

**Moly at the short par 4 7th, the wide fairway narrows significantly around 230 yards.**

The course has some very difficult holes, no more so than ‘Cannon Hill’, the 6th, a worthy stroke index 1.

**The approach to the difficult par four 6th, “Cannon Hill’s”, the stroke index 1 hole.**

The railway is often in play and gives the course added edge, out of bounds running the length of several holes. The 4th, The Moor, is the hole people talk about: a pond hard against the tee, out of bounds down the left, and a green backed directly onto the railway boundary, the line’s overhead gantries filling the skyline behind the flag.

**Tron Carter (TC) of No Laying Up loves the 4th at Bogside.**

It’s not just me rating it; Tron Carter of the No Laying Up podcast built himself a fantasy 18-hole course on episode 1151, one hole per course he’d played, matched by hole number, and Bogside’s 4th made the cut as part of his dream.

Here’s my one real gripe. There’s a fair amount of blind driving and approach work through the round, notably at the 12th, one of Braid’s own new holes, no less and again at the 14th, where the green sits in its own hidden punchbowl. That sits oddly against the man who redesigned the course: Braid wrote in Advanced Golf (1908) that blind holes should be avoided, “and especially a blind shot to the green.”

**The ‘blind’ 14th green, where the bowl should help your approach find the green.**

Now the value case. I paid £32 through GolfNow; today’s rack rate is £90–£125 depending on season, and GolfNow itself is currently listing Bogside at £115 with no Hot Deals running, barely a discount off list price. There’s a folk explanation clubs like to reach for here, that American visitors equate a high green fee with quality, so pricing low would actually cost business. It doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny. A lot of US visitors book through tour operators, buying flights, hotels and golf as a single package, and never see the individual green fee at all; they can’t be pricing courses on a fee they don’t see. What overseas visitors genuinely lack is a reference point: what a comparable course nearby charges, or what this course cost a few years ago. That’s a much simpler explanation for why fees have room to rise unnoticed than any theory about American taste. Whatever the reasoning, Irvine’s tripled its rate since 2023, and the golfer picking up the difference isn’t the tourist it’s golfer like me, deciding whether this round is still worth it. At £32, this was one of the best value rounds I’ve played anywhere in Scotland; Open Final Qualifying pedigree, Braid’s bunkering, a genuinely varied test, for municipal money. At today’s prices — list or GolfNow, that value case collapses; this is a 2/5 course at what it costs now.

**The 18th tee and, right on cue, a reminder of the neighbours. .**

It finished well, at least. The 18th runs you out almost to the clubhouse door, and it was worth lingering afterwards in the lovely old building with real history inside; Old Tom Morris attended a professional tournament here in 1919, and his signed photograph still hangs on the wall.

A wedge into the 18th, Flagstaff, found enough of the green to leave a putt worth having, and it dropped for a birdie three — the kind of ending that forgives a round its rough patches.

Facts: Course Type — Links/Heathland. Par 71 (yellow tees). Distance — 6,152 yards (Yellow tees).

Moly’s Gross Score, 93 (nett 79).

189. Belleisle. 25 Apr 2023.

July 30, 2026 / Moly McMillan

Belleisle – the people’s course, heading back to the gentry?

Price paid £30 (GolfPass voucher).

Value 5/5 at £30; 4/5 at current GolfNow (~ £43); 3.5/5 at list price £60.

Belleisle’s story has a sweet beginning. The estate’s lands, originally Netherton of Alloway, passed through Ayrshire gentry before Hugh Hamilton bought the property around 1787 using Jamaican plantation money, renaming it Belleisle. The Baronial sandstone mansion was rebuilt in the 1800s, then the Coats family, Paisley thread manufacturers, acquired it in 1886.

**The beautifully manicured 12th fairway at Belleisle, showcases the condition.**

Following the death of George Coats, Ayr Burgh Council purchased the entire estate for £25,000, opening James Braid’s two courses in 1927. Finally, the working man could walk the same ground his grandfather had doffed his cap to. There is a certain irony, then, in the fact that the listed green fee has doubled in two years since I played to now £60. One finds oneself wondering when the first £100 municipal round will arrive and whether Scotland will even notice what it has lost.

**The opening tee at Belleisle; wide, well-maintained, and immediately signalling something above the municipal average.**

Belleisle is the flagship of Golf South Ayrshire’s eight courses, which are covered in Blog 136. It is a proper Braid design, only two par fours under 400 yards from the yellow tees, fast-running fairways, and sound bunkering. The greens and surrounds are the real quality indicator, and on the day Fran and I played, late April sunshine, warmer to the eye than to the skin, they were excellent. It played like a good private members’ course in England. Which, at a municipal green fee, is precisely the point.

**The approach to the 2nd, beautiful parkland character**

The white tees add nearly 400 yards and lift the par from 69 to 71, with holes 1 and 15 both becoming par 5s. The 15th in particular, 426 yards from yellow, 478 from white, would actually be easier from the white.

**The 15th, a long par four with a stone bridge, a burn, and an estate lodge for company.**

Fran and I played steadily. I shot 89, undone by a 10 on the 18th, a 504-yard par 5 with a burn, a dogleg, and a steep gully that I negotiated with maximum creativity!

**Fran playing into the 6th, with the par 3 7th and Arran beyond. Municipal golf at its finest.**

A shortage of bunker rakes is noteworthy, a Golf South Ayrshire policy issue discussed in Blog 136, not a Belleisle-specific failing. The absence of twilight rates is more surprising for a late April afternoon, and is itself a small symptom of the broader commercial drift in municipal golf pricing.

Fran’s approach to the 18th, with the roofless shell of Belleisle House behind. Sold by the council in 2012, gutted by accidental fire in 2019, the council were mid-process repurchasing it when the blaze broke out.

The mansion tells its own story. Belleisle House, Category B listed, Scottish Baronial, presiding over the 18th fairway; it was sold off by South Ayrshire Council in 2012 for £300,000 and gutted by an accidental fire in 2019. The council now own the shell. The golf course thrives; the house that once commanded the estate does not.

For international visitors wanting to understand Scottish golf, Belleisle is essential. It showcases what civic investment in the game can produce at its best. At £29.99 it was exceptional. At £43 via GolfNow today it remains good value. At the £60 list price, the ancestors might start to feel the ground shifting beneath them again.

Course Type: Parkland
Par 69 yellow tees (2 par 5s, 12 par 4s, 4 par 3s) / Par 71 white tees
Distance: 6,036 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope (yellow): 70.2 / 119
Moly’s Gross Score: 89

184. West Kilbride. 24 Mar 2023.

June 11, 2026 / Moly McMillan

Walter Hagen thought better of it. He made a big mistake.

Round: £40 (Winter rate). Par 71. Course Rating 69.7, Slope 120.

Value: 5/5.

Moly’s Score: 95.

Three miles south of Seamill on a rocky promontory above the Firth of Clyde, sits Portencross Castle, a squat fourteenth-century tower house with a roofline destroyed in 1739 and never repaired. This place was consequential long before the castle was built as its land was given by Robert the Bruce to Sir Robert Boyd of Kilmarnock for his service at Bannockburn. The castle became a purgatory stop for Scotland’s dead kings; their bodies lying in state before being transported by a birlinn, a traditional Hebridean ship, to Iona for burial.

By the 1890s, the Craufurds had long since replaced the Boyds of Kilmarnock dynasty. It was Hugh Craufurd, Laird of Auchenames and Portencross, who played the first tee shot at West Kilbride Golf Club in 1893, on the nine-hole course laid out by Old Tom Morris.

**Hole 1, Burn, looking at the Firth of Clyde and the Isle of Arran. The Laird of Auchenames drove off here in May 1893.**

The course extended to 18 in 1905, and the layout was altered again in 1914 and 1925, both done by James Braid. There are many parallels with Lundin GC, blog 84, with the links land predominantly the Morris holes, with Braid encroaching on the more arable turf. The resulting layout it is not a simple out-and-back routing, with Braid keen to make regular changes in wind effect, where he could.

**The Old Tom / James Braid layout, a course with parallels to Lundin GC in Fife.**

I played alone for only £40 on the winter rate, an unbelievable bargain, in changeable weather conditions as the photos show. Being alone at West Kilbride was mostly meditative, despite a forensic start.

At the first hole, Burn, a par four of 326 yards, my thinned drive embedded in the face of a bunker; not in the sand, but in the turf wall – a rule referee wasn’t available.

**The opening drive, embedded in the face of the bunker. A rule***s quiz* – what can you do?

Does a ball embedded in the face of a bunker entitle you to free relief? The answer is yes — provided the ball is embedded in the turf of the rivetted wall or face, not in sand. The relief is to find the nearest point in the general area not nearer the hole and drop within one club-length. No penalty. The catch: if any part of the ball is touching sand, free relief evaporates and you play it as it lies or take an unplayable.

I took the free drop and still made seven. The rules of golf are at times generous, but they don’t always mean a lower score.

**The approach to the par five 3rd hole ‘Yonderfield’. The trees perfectly illustrating the prevailing wind underlying how West Kilbride challenges your game.**

I played a good round in difficult windy conditions with Out of Bounds (OOB) in play on twelve holes. There is nowhere to hide at West Kilbride. I finished with 95 gross and 29 Stableford points off 14, which in those conditions represented something around par for the day.

The front nine is somewhat on arable, not true links, land. The back nine has more of the original links land holes, giving you two linked but distinct experiences. It is at the turn, Ardneil, the tenth, that the course reveals its real character, with OOBs running the complete left hand side. The westerly prevailing wind becomes your friend here.

**Moly driving at the difficult par four 10th, the stroke index 3 hole, with gorse starting to bloom in March! As a lone golfer you need to be good at setting the camera.**

By my back nine, something else had changed: the weather. The grey overcast of the first hour had given way to Ayrshire sunshine, the Firth beginning to catch the light and Arran stunningly on the horizon. Links golf in Scotland operates a variable weather tariff, not unlike most of the fees these days. The same course that hands you a seven on the first hole in a grey wind can, within two hours, be offering something close to transcendence.

The green at the 13th, the toughest hole – *stroke index 1, 406 yards, par 4. The conditioning fully on show, as was the improving weather.*

The greens and their surrounds were excellent, brilliant conditioning for late March. The links turf was quality. The hole names carry their own character: Yonderfield, Rushy Bog, Lang Wham, Hunger-em-oot.

The club has attracting high profile visitors over the years and were keen to get Walter Hagen, the “first touring pro” to play an exhibition. Hagen failed to agree his fee and “went elsewhere”, ironically agreeing to play The Machrie on the Isle of Islay, but traveled incorrectly to Machrie Bay on Arran, a much lesser course; blog 110. This was a mistake in more ways than he imagined! Open Champion Bobby Locke played here in 1951, clearly being less demanding than Hagen, the real hustler.

**Hole 16, Hunger-em-oot: the signature hole. The West Kilbride Golf Club outbuilding with its sign, the two flanking bunkers, and the Firth of Clyde beyond. This is the image of the course.**

West Kilbride is the most northerly of Ayrshire’s true links courses, including Dundonald, Glasgow Gailes, Troon, Prestwick and Turnberry, partly explaining the lower pricing of £40 in March, which deserves reflection.

The course costs £85 on a summer weekday, more than double the winter rate. That Summer/Winter gap has widened considerably over the past decade as Scottish links golf has repriced itself upward as a premium product. At the top of the market, Kingsbarns charges £448 and Turnberry’s rack rate is £545. Green fees at premium Scottish courses have inflated at roughly 7-8% per year over the past two decades, three times the rate of general inflation. The winter links visitor becomes a shrewder operator.

The course is genuinely excellent; I would go back without hesitation and happily pay more than £40 to do so.

**Hole 16 green: looking south along the Firth of Clyde toward Arran. Stone walls, sunshine, the flag. This is what £40 buys you in March at West Kilbride.**

Facts:

Course Type: Links

Par 71 (2 par 5s, 13 par 4s, 4 par 3s)

Distance: 6,146 yards (Ardneil/yellow tees)

Course Rating 69.7, Slope 120

Moly’s Gross Score: 95 (29 Stableford points, net 81)

**Moly’s scorecard, a day for a stableford preferably.**

180. Hilton Park. 21 Mar 23.

February 2, 2026 / Moly McMillan

Ewan Grimes – What a Pro!

Value – 4/5

Golf in Scotland is a competitive market, so a friendly welcome is essential. Ewan Grimes, the recently appointed pro at Hilton Park, could not have been more hospitable to me. It made up for the miserably wet weather and golf course, which arguably should have been closed. At least that meant it was very quiet and took less than 3 hours to play.

**The 17th at Hilton Park, a par 3 of 184 yards with common white and yellow tees**.

Hilton Park, just outside Milngavie, is about 10 miles north of Glasgow City Centre, but feels much more remote. It is one of only 23 clubs in Scotland that has two or more 18 hole courses. Moreover, it is one of only 3 clubs with two heathland courses, the others being Gleneagles and Blairgowrie.

**Moly putting on the 6th, the most difficult of the four par 3s.**

I played both the Hilton Park and Allander courses in one day, which was a challenge given the undulating terrain. A buggy might be useful here. There are excellent views, including of the Glasgow skyline, something made easier by the loss of many trees in recent years due to storms.

The Hilton Park layout was much more demanding that its sister Allander course, but as a combination of courses they compliment each other really well.

**The well bunkered par three 12th hole, the stroke index 18 hole.**

The course routing was a little confusing and I ended up playing the 15th hole twice, having also played some of the Allander holes in the wrong order. I suspect the reason was the shortened winter course. It was so wet, I was the only player.

**The 18th is a strong finish at this undulating course.**

Sadly, winter greens were in operation on the majority of holes, but I was only charged £30 for both rounds via Golfnow, which was excellent value. Overall, the Hilton Park property is one of the best in Scotland, and worth checking out.