Scotland Golf Bible

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194. Troon Links (Lochgreen). 29 Apr 23.

October 24, 2026 /

The road to the Open ran through this municipal course for forty years; Jack Nicklaus took it, though not the way the legend tells it.

Price Paid: £19.99 (GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £38 list; £30 GolfNow Hot Deal
Value (out of 5): 5 at price paid / 5 at current GolfNow / 4.5 at current list
Moly’s Score: 85 gross, 72 nett, 38 Stableford points (playing handicap 13)

The 5th, stroke index 1, runs beside the Glasgow to Ayr railway. On the far side of the line lie Royal Troon’s members’ courses. On this side, the people’s golf. Moly took a 7.

In my Troon Darley blog (136) I wrote about two tiers of Scottish golf: Royal Troon’s clubhouse and the Troon Links clubhouse are less than a mile, but a world, apart. Lochgreen is where those two worlds used to meet.

From 1923 to 1962, anyone who wanted to play in The Open at Troon first had to qualify, and half the qualifying was on the municipal course. In 1923 it was still called Troon Municipal No.2. Gene Sarazen shot 75 on it on the Monday. On the Tuesday he went out first on Troon’s New (Portland) course into the worst of the rain and wind, shot 85, and failed to qualify. Walter Hagen scraped in on 159. The municipal half had not been Sarazen’s hurdle.

The 15th tee, framed by pines and full flowering broom, a highlight all round the course.

The 1962 Open was the last with no qualifying exemptions, so even the reigning US Open champion, a 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus, had to play a round over Royal Troon’s Old Course and one over Lochgreen. Every Lochgreen write-up mentions this. One goes further, claiming he “shot an 82 and then a 68 on the Troon Links Lochgreen course to qualify by one shot”.

Fran on the 12th tee, in the “Dovecot Section”. Three holes of mature estate parkland, a different course entirely from the links holes either side.

It doesn’t add up. Only one of the two qualifying rounds was on Lochgreen. The qualifying mark was 154, and 82 plus 68 is 150, four shots inside it. The figures look borrowed from the championship proper. Nicklaus opened with 80 on the Old Course, including a 10 at the 11th, then shot 72, making 152, exactly the halfway cut. Twelve players on 153 went home. So the scramble happened, but on Royal Troon, not here. Somewhere along the way the legend crossed the railway line. His actual qualifying scores have so far eluded me.

The 16th, a par 5 with devilish bunkers cut into a heathery bank, unseen from the fairway until you’re on top of them. The bunkering is Lochgreen’s strongest feature.

So, the course? Lochgreen is quite long. At par 74 with five par 5s, it’s the longest of the three Troon Links courses. The par flatters, though. From the yellows the Course Rating is 71.1, nearly three shots below par. Under the handicap rules in force in 2023, that worked in my favour: the 38 points came against a par the rating says is soft. Since April 2024, Scotland’s handicap formula deducts the difference, and the same round off the same index would give a course handicap of 10, not 13, and around 35 points. Lochgreen’s par 74 used to be a three-shot present to every Stableford player who teed it up there.

The 6th green, a tough par 3. A deep revetted bunker, properly shaped and properly punishing: the quality of Lochgreen in a single frame.

The links holes play over firm turf that I suspect differs little from Royal Troon’s across the line. The driving is generous, but the greenside bunkering is not: deep, revetted and properly placed. The 5th, with the railway tight on the right, is the hole to remember, and it was my only blank on the card. Holes 11 to 13 break off into the parkland of the Dovecot Section, with veteran trees, a stone ruin and a reed bed behind one green. That suits a course named after a loch drained long ago. The Lochgreen name survives; the loch itself is now a culverted burn.

The approach to the 13th: crisp greenside bunkers in the parkland stretch, with a reed bed behind, the nearest thing left to a loch at Lochgreen.

The condition was the weak point. A year after my Darley round, and a month later in the season, the fairways were still thin, worn and straw-coloured. Nothing about the Glasgow winter overflow I described in Blog 136 had changed. The greens held up; I just didn’t hole anything on them. Better putting would have made it a very good round rather than a decent one.

The 10th green, a par 3 in good order. It was getting to it that showed the wear.

On value, one development since Blog 136. Then, GolfNow was the competitor the council was responding to with “dynamic pricing”. Now South Ayrshire sells its tee times through GolfNow’s own platform. The discount app has become the shop counter. At £19.99, Lochgreen was 5/5. At the current £30 Hot Deal it still is. At £38 list it drops half a point, mostly because of the condition. It’s still a long, historic, properly bunkered links for a fraction of the price across the line, if you could get on, that is!

Fran putting on the 18th green in front of the Troon Links clubhouse, the shared home of Lochgreen, Darley and Fullarton.

Next, Fullarton (Blog 195), the shortest course of the three, where the land story begins.

Facts:

Course Type: Links, with a three-hole parkland stretch
Par: 74 (5 par 5s, 10 par 4s, 3 par 3s)
Distance: 6,476 yards (yellow)
Course Rating / Slope: 71.1 / 120 (yellow)
Course Quality: 3.5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 85 (38 points)

Moly’s Lochgreen scorecard: 85 gross, 38 points. The 7 at the 5th was the only blank.


193. Maybole. 29 Apr 23.

October 22, 2026 /

Maybole: a town that has never agreed on anything, including whether it needs a golf course.

Price Paid: £4 (winter rate, paid at the swimming pool over the road)
Current Price (2026): £8 GolfNow; £24 list (Golf South Ayrshire)
Value: 3/5 at £4 paid | 2.5/5 at £8 GolfNow | 1/5 at £24 list
Moly’s Score: 40 gross, 34 net, 17 Stableford points (9 holes)

Getting a consensus in Maybole has never been easy. Start with the name. A charter of 1192 calls the place Maybothel, which some read as Old English for a maiden’s house. Others prefer Gaelic: a plain with a cattle fold on it. The old folk called it Minnybole, which points to a moor instead. When the Ordnance Survey arrived in the 1850s, its surveyors dutifully listed the rival theories and dismissed one as purely fanciful. Nobody has settled it since.

Then there is the town’s most famous argument. In 1562 John Knox came to Carrick and was challenged by Quintin Kennedy, Abbot of Crossraguel, to debate the Mass. They met in the Provost’s house with forty witnesses apiece and argued for three days. Neither man won. The 1860 Encyclopaedia Britannica records that both claimed victory. That is Maybole in a sentence.

Which brings me to golf, and an argument the town has been having for a decade: does Maybole need a golf course?

The club was founded in 1905 on a course off the Dailly Road. It later moved into the Memorial Park, land the town bought to remember its Great War dead. In 1935 a storm lifted the pavilion off its foundations and smashed it. Visitors then paid sixpence a round and couldn’t play on Sundays. Closure threats came in 2016, 2018 and 2020. In February 2023 the club finally folded for “lack of support”, and the golf press mourned a 118-year-old institution.

I went looking to debunk the 118 years, and I couldn’t. Golf’s Missing Links headlines the club as 1905–2023, then says in its own text that it ceased to exist in 1923. Even the archive can’t reach a consensus. But its Golfer’s Handbook entries run unbroken from the 1930s to the 2000s, so 1923 is plainly a slip for 2023. The club’s age stands. The course is younger.

Fourteen months later, Carrick Speakers Golf Club folded too, after 35 years. That made two clubs gone from one nine-holer. The course carries on regardless as one of eight run by Golf South Ayrshire, and the local councillor insists there is no threat to it. A community company now wants the pavilion as a meeting space and e-bike store. That may be the future of the Scottish town course: still there, but no longer anybody’s club.

The Maybole Golf Club pavilion, shuttered since the club folded in February 2023. Green fees are now paid at the swimming pool across the road, and a community group has applied to turn the building into a meeting space and e-bike store.

I arrived ten weeks after the club folded, paid my £4 at the pool, and played alone. The course repays the effort. It is hilly and constantly undulating, with small greens. The par 3s are the real examination: the 3rd and 6th measure 198 and 219 yards off the yellows, a long way to a small target, and both cost me a shot. Footgolf shares the fairways, and dog walkers share everything else.

The tee markers deserve a paragraph of their own. Each hole has a yellow metal bin, hand-painted with its name and yardages. The 1st is “Railway”. Somebody took real care over these. The dog walkers have found another use for them.

The 1st, “Railway”: hand-painted yardages on a metal tee bin. It doubles as a dog-bag bin, which is about as municipal as golf gets.

The 3rd green looks back over the rooftops of the old Kennedy capital. The 5th climbs steadily to a green beneath the Maybole War Memorial, a reminder of why this park exists at all.

Behind the 3rd green, Maybole’s slate roofs and church fall away down the hill. The green is small and sloping, typical of the course.
The 5th green beneath the Maybole War Memorial. The bunker is neatly raked, its edge less so: honest council maintenance.

The conditioning is honest council standard: well-cut fairways, raked bunkers, and rough edges where the budget runs out. It is better than its South Ayrshire stablemate Dalmilling (Blog 192). I went round in 40 for 17 points, in 65 minutes, which on those greens felt fair.

The 4th Green, showing the dovetailed Foot and Normal golf
From the 9th tee, the view back to the swimming pool, where you pay, and the town beyond. A lone dog walker is on duty.

At £4 this is 3/5 value. Cheap is not the same as good value: there is no club, no clubhouse, and a course that is honest rather than memorable. At £8 on GolfNow it slips to 2.5/5. At the new £24 rack rate it is 1/5, because for that money you’d expect the clubhouse lights to be on.

Whether Maybole needs a golf course is a debate that, like Knox and the abbot, will probably end with both sides claiming victory. For £4, I’m happy to declare mine.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland (hilly town course in the Memorial Park)
Par: 33 for 9 holes (6 par 4s, 3 par 3s); 66 played twice
Distance: 2,420 yards from the yellows (4,840 for 18)
Course Rating/Slope: 64.0 / 109 (yellow, 18 holes)
Course Quality: 2/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 40 (34 net, 17 Stableford points)

Moly’s card, 40 shots took 65 minutes!

192. Dalmilling. 28 Apr 23.

October 20, 2026 /

Dalmilling – please check this course is still open.

Price paid £17.99 (GolfNow), against a £19 rack rate.

Current price (2026): £45 list; £22 GolfNow; £19 GolfNow Hot Deal.

Value 2/5 at £19–£22 via GolfNow; 1/5 at £45 list price.

Dalmilling has a long history of being given up on. Around 1220, Walter fitz Alan, High Steward of Scotland and ancestor of the Stewart kings, brought the Gilbertines (England’s only home-grown monastic order) to found a priory here on the River Ayr. Within a decade they had resigned it “of their own free will”. By about 1240 the last two canons had been told to hand the lands to Paisley Abbey and go home to England. Nothing of the priory survives.

The 1st, encapsulating the fairly bland layout of the least inspiring of South Ayrshire Council’s courses.

The golf course, opened by the council in 1961, has outlasted the monks six times over, no thanks to the landlord, South Ayrshire Council, which has tried to close it at least three times. There was an attempt which ended with a councillor facing 200 angry golfers. In 2017 the council leader wanted houses and an urban park, conceding that the course was good for golfers but not for anyone else. Then in early 2020 it appeared on a list of five of the council’s eight courses earmarked for closure. Each time it survived. The 2018 reprieve came with promises of trees and a perimeter path, and the pandemic golf boom turned the 2020 hit list into an investment Programme. Hence the headline; Before you drive.

The 6th, the best hole on the course: 107 yards, but the burn in its ditch makes it count.

The council has spent money on the clubhouse but not, as far as I could see, on the course. There were no rakes, a Golf South Ayrshire policy already covered in Blog 136. The tees were marked by little plastic cones, and the teeing grounds were scuffed bare. It took me straight back to the Caird Park nine-holer in Dundee, where I started playing: honest municipal golf, maintained to a budget, for people who expect nothing more.

A typical Dalmilling view at the 8th: wide, open and generous, with divots abounding.

At 5,209 yards from the yellows, with five par 3s, it’s short. The one hole with genuine character is the 6th, a 107-yard par 3 over a burn sunk in a steep-sided ditch, with mature trees on either side. Naturally, I made a double-bogey 5 there.

Fran putting on the 12th, with the open layout under a flat grey April sky.

Dalmilling is a good starter course: short, open and forgiving. But it doesn’t need 18 holes. Nine good ones would serve beginners better and cost the council less. I suspect it survives on the season-ticket and green-fee income of Belleisle (Blog 189) and Troon rather than on its own account. At £17.99 it was cheap, but cheap isn’t the same as good value, hence 2/5. The list price has since more than doubled to £45, for a course where I saw no sign of investment. That’s 1/5. GolfNow still sells it for £19–£22, a gap which suggests even the council doesn’t know what it’s really worth. Or perhaps, they’re laying the ground for closure?

Course Type: Parkland
Par 69 yellow tees (2 par 5s, 11 par 4s, 5 par 3s)
Distance: 5,209 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope (yellow): 65.7 / 113
Course Quality: 2/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 85 (32 Stableford points)

Moly’s Dalmilling scorecard, poor for such an open course, albeit ground conditions heavy.

191. Prestwick St Nicholas. 27 Apr 23.

September 17, 2026 /

Friendship has unrivalled value.

Round price: unknown (guest of a member); GolfNow rate at the time £55-£65. Current Fee (2026) £130. Current GolfNow (2026) ~ £65

Value; at current fee, 3/5, at GolfNow 4/5.

Before our game, I’d never met Doug McKinnon, a great friend of my friend Frank Crowe who introduced us. Not only was I heartedly welcomed, Doug waved aside any attempt to pay my guest fee. That kindness is this blog’s message.

The gorse lined first amid grey Ayrshire skies, a classic links opening.

It’s not unusual either. Golfers are proud of their golf club and will show it off given an opportunity, especially as they understand how visitor green fees have outstripped the pocket of most golfers. Indeed, allowing Members’ guests is one of the great benefits of club membership. Social media groups now solely exist, not only in Scotland, to provide platforms for reciprocal guest arrangements as it’s often the only way many are able to afford the more expensive courses.

‘St Nicholas’ is proper links land on the north edge of Prestwick. Gorse adorned throughout, with the Firth of Clyde tight along the course and Arran across the water influencing the local weather. We played into a shifting south-easterly, which, on ground this exposed, epitomised links defence.

The Salt Pan Houses behind the 1st green, a Category A listed building, and one of the most complete survivals of Scotland’s saltboiling industry.

A pair of stone Cat A listed buildings sit behind the 1st green, the Salt Pan Houses, built circa 1760 for the Maryburgh Salt Works. They are regarded as the most complete remains of Scotland’s salt boiling industry. That industry keeps resurfacing: the 3rd is named Maryborough after the works, the 12th is simply “Pans.”

Doug chipping at the 3rd, with the Salt Pan Houses again, closer up.

The club’s founding story is worth recording. Its website leads with “Co-Founded by Old Tom Morris in 1851”, the sort of claim that often outruns the archive. However, this time it’s spot on: Morris, then ‘Keeper of the Green’ at nearby Prestwick Golf Club, met working golfers at the Red Lion Inn in 1851 to found the Prestwick Mechanics Club, the tradesmen’s response to the gentlemen’s club next door. It didn’t become “St Nicholas” until 1858, didn’t get its own course until 1877, and didn’t settle at Grangemuir Road until 1892. So the lineage holds, but the turf we played has sadly nothing to do with anything Morris laid out. However, the story of a working man’s club founded in the shadow of a gentlemen’s one, is better suited than the clubhouse plaque.

The approach on the tough par four 8th, a flooded quarry pit guarding the green.

What you actually play has real variety: flat, easy walking in stretches, then holes that turn hard without warning. The 8th, Quarry, with its flooded pit crowding the green, is one. Knowing which holes to attack and which to defend is the whole strategic game here.

The 2nd hole, Bruce, lays a consistent clue to the great underlying story of the land. Along with the 5th (St Ninians) and the 15th (Kingcase) they all point at the same legend: Robert the Bruce, cured of leprosy after striking his spear into the ground at Kingcase, founded St Ninian’s leper hospital there in gratitude. The well and chapel ruins survive behind the modern church, dated to the 13th century. Three holes walk you straight through it.

Moly on the par three 2nd tee, called ‘Bruce’.
The 15th ‘Kingcase’ the revetted bunker guarding front left, a testament to the conditioning, with the Salt Pan Houses’ chimney line visible again on the horizon.

Two names I couldn’t fully uncover. The 9th, Cock O’ Bendy, nobody at the club could explain. The 11th, Pladda, made more sense once worked out: the only par 5, running along the shoreline, named, one imagines for the small island off Arran, visible from the tee. Ayrshire links have form for naming holes after the view rather than the ground. I carded an 11 there.

The 16th, Tom Morris, I imagine is a regular “card wrecker” where I took 7, gorse pressing in both sides back to the clubhouse. The 17th, easy by comparison, brought a birdie. Golf!

The tough 16th, Tom Morris, running the gauntlet between the gorse back toward the clubhouse; my card-wrecker of the day.

The real teeth are saved for last. The 18th, Home, is 225 yards into the prevailing wind; most golfers won’t reach it with a driver, so it plays as a short par 4 with the wrong club in hand. Doug reckoned Colin Montgomerie once called it the hardest par 3 in Ayrshire; I couldn’t find that written down, so take it as clubhouse lore, but into a stiffening wind I wasn’t arguing.

The 18th, 225 yards into the prevailing wind, one of the toughest par 3s in Scotland.

Would I go back? Without hesitation. A fair, strategic links test with real history behind it, and a good place for a first-timer to start on links golf. For the membership, it looks a thoroughly good club to grow old in. At the GolfNow rate, 4 out of 5. As Doug’s guest, worth more than any number I’ve got.

Facts:

Course Type: Links

Par 69 (1 par 5, 13 par 4s, 4 par 3s)

Distance: 5,686 yards (Yellow tees, as played)

Moly’s Gross Score: 92

Moly’s Prestwick St Nicholas Scorecard

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