Scotland Golf Bible

A guide to green fee value for money

206. Kilspindie. 21 Jun 23.

November 9, 2026 /

Luffness, then Craigielaw, now Kilspindie: the club that kept losing its name.

Price Paid: Member’s guest
Current Price: £100 (2025, club website), weekdays and weekends (club website)
Value: 4/5 at list price
Moly’s Score: 82 gross, 36 Stableford points

Kilspindie sits on the western edge of Aberlady, about 15 miles east of Edinburgh,squeezed between the village and Aberlady Bay. The week I played Kilspindie, Lloyd Cole of the Commotions told The Times where he feels happiest: “If my game doesn’t totally suck, as it has the past few years, the links of Kilspindie, East Lothian, with my son Frank.” I understand why, after playing it only once.

Moly on the 5th tee, The Law. It’s 272 yards, a par 4 you can drive in theory, with the Firth of Forth alongside all the way.

I played with Kilspindie member Mike Johnson and his pal Derek Phillips, who, like me, is a Dundonian. Fittingly, the Kilspindie name isn’t local either. The Douglases of Kilspindie probably took it from a hamlet in the Carse of Gowrie, twelve miles west of Dundee, an area where Derek and I most likely picked berries in our youth. The most famous of the Douglases, Archibald “Greysteil” Douglas, was Provost of Edinburgh and Treasurer to the young James V. The Douglases’ castle stood behind Aberlady kirk. So two Dundonians spent the morning on a links named after berry lands near Dundee. I like that.

Approaching the 13th, The Kirk, between the old stone walls. Kilspindie Castle’s stones went into the walls around Aberlady, and it’s nice to think a few ended up here.

Blog 204 tells the story of the Luffness club division in 1894, into Luffness and Luffness New, the latter moving to its current course. The Aberlady-based Luffness members remained on the old course until it’s lease ran out in 1898, and the Earl of Wemyss offered the club links land across the Aberlady Bay. Some histories, Scottish Golf History among them, say it became Kilspindie that year, but the clubhouse wall tells a different story. A notice setting caddie rules from 16 January 1899 is signed for “Luffness Golf Club”, and so is a rifle-range notice dated 16 March 1899. The club’s own date of 1899 stands, and the renaming came no earlier than spring.

Caddie rules for the “Muirfield, Gullane, Craigielaw & Luffness Mill Links”, 1899: four links and four clubs. The old Luffness club signs for the third, Craigielaw, and New Luffness for Luffness Mill.

The caddie notice has a further twist. Four links are named and four clubs sign it, so the old club’s new ground was the Craigielaw links. One golf history says just that: the members “moved to the Craigielaw Links in 1898”. The club had already lost the name Luffness to its own breakaway. A century later it lost the second. In the late 1990s Kilspindie set out to build a second eighteen on the ground next door, its landlord’s ground, and members paid handsomely for the privilege. After two years of fractious negotiation, the Wemyss and March Estates pulled out in 2001. The estate then built the course itself, with Donald Steel, and called it Craigielaw (Blog 182). So, the landlord that rescued the club in 1898 had become its competitor next door. As far as I can tell, Kilspindie still leases its links from the same estate. The two clubs now name a hole after each other: Kilspindie’s 17th is “Craigielaw” and Craigielaw’s 6th is “Kilspindie”. Make of that what you will.

Mike on the 17th green, named Craigielaw, with the stone wall and the clubhouse beyond.

The Wanster, the ground under the 9th to 11th is “perhaps the oldest golfing ground of the lot”. I’ve checked. Aberlady golfers played there sometime before 1867, and the club says before 1850, sharing the ground with the Aberlady company of the Haddingtonshire Rifle Volunteers. Gullane, however, has seven holes on record by 1840, plus a legend of 1650 matches in which Aberlady’s weavers walked over to Gullane to play. The verdict is that very Scottish one: not proven. When the golfers came back to the Wanster in 1898, the riflemen were still there, and members were told to “turn at the Third Hole” whenever the Volunteers were shooting. The 4th, The Target, and the 11th, The Magazine, are named after the range.

“Notice as to Rifle Range”, March 1899, still signed for Luffness Golf Club and issued “in terms of the Lease of the Links”: a tenant from its first season.

The golf is a delight. The 2nd to the 7th run along the coast, and water is in play on several of them when the tide is in. The greens were the best of the week, which is saying something after Luffness New and Gullane No 2.

Mike putts out on the 4th, The Target, with the beach drained by the tide and the hills of Fife beyond.
The 6th tee, Green Craig, as smooth as many greens, with 268 yards of fairway running towards Aberlady and the beach on the right.

Keep your ego in check, though. From the yellows it’s 5,209 yards, and several par 4s are almost drivable. My 82 was exactly my handicap, 36 points, and it was not half as good as my 86 in the wind at Luffness New. Lloyd Cole’s caveat applies in reverse: here, even a mediocre game can look good.

Moly on the 8th, Gosford Bay, the club’s signature par 3, with the shore all down the right. I made par, as the scorecard will confirm.

The clubhouse is a time capsule. The members’ lockers line the bar and dining room, next to the whisky cabinet. I’m told that in years gone by, members thought nothing of changing there while other people ate their lunch.

Lockers 11 to 16, the past captains, and the malt whisky cabinet, all in the same room.

Value? At £100, Kilspindie costs half Luffness New’s summer rate (£210, Blog 204), and the same as a weekday round on Gullane No 2 (Blog 205) and less than Craigielaw’s £125 (Blog 182). It’s short, but the setting, the greens and the history are first-rate. That’s 4/5.

Mike finishes on the 18th, Home.

Gullane No 3 that afternoon: Blog 207.

Facts:

Course Type: Links
Par: 69 (1 par 5, 14 par 4s, 4 par 3s)
Distance: 5,209 yards (yellow)
Course Rating / Slope: 65.7 / 106
Course Quality: 4.5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 82 (36 Stableford points)

Moly’s scorecard – 82.

205. Gullane Number 2. 20 Jun 23.

November 5, 2026 /

Built partly on Old Tom’s Luffness leftovers, borrowed recently by the Scottish Open, and a third of the price of its Number 1 brother.

Price Paid: Guest of a member
Current Price (2026): £100 weekday, £125 weekend; club offers from £80. GolfNow: ~£80.
Value Rating: Current list: weekday 4/5, weekend 3.5/5; offers 4.5/5
Moly’s Score: 80 gross, 41 Stableford points

When I reviewed Gullane No 1 (Blog 143), Alastair Allanach was my host. He’s a Gullane member who has played more courses than anyone I know. A year later, the day after playing Luffness New (Blog 204), he took me round his club’s middle child.

Gullane sits on the south shore of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian, about 20 miles east of Edinburgh. GolfNow gives the address as North Berwick, five miles further along the coast. It isn’t.

Alastair on the high fairway of the 3rd, with East Lothian laid out below him all the way to the Lammermuirs.

Luffness New (Blog 204) left a loose end. In 1893 Gullane’s landowners, the Nisbet Hamilton Ogilvys, pointed out that the northern holes of Old Tom Morris’s Luffness links were on their ground, and asked for rent. Luffness built a ‘New’ course instead. When the old club’s lease ran out in 1898 it left for Aberlady and soon called itself Kilspindie, and that same year Willie Park Jr’s Gullane No 2 opened. According to Scottish Golf History, the 12th and 13th, and probably the 14th, play over Old Tom’s original Luffness course. They’re the holes that come down off the hill to the edge of Aberlady Bay. Nothing on the ground tells you so.

The 12th tee, dropping off the hill onto what was Old Tom Morris’s Luffness links, with Aberlady Bay below and Arthur’s Seat on the horizon.

Now the economics. When I played No 1 in 2022, the visitor rate was £195. In 2026 it’s £285 on a weekday and £325 at weekends. No 2 costs £100 on the same hill. You don’t need an economist to work out where the visitors are going, and No 2 is much busier than its old reputation as the members’ spare would suggest.

The gentle opening, two pleasant par 4s to warm you up, had me guessing James Braid. Wrong. Park, twice Open champion, laid it out, and the real business starts at the 3rd. It’s a 233-yard par 4 that climbs blind up the flank of the hill, with only the top of the flag showing. I made a three, and at the summit you’re rewarded with a view west to Arthur’s Seat.

The 4th, stroke index 1, falls back towards the Forth. Alastair hit a drive straight at the tankers anchored in the Firth, then a delicate chip between two bunkers.

Alastair’s drive from the 4th tee, with ships at anchor in the Forth, with Fife beyond.
Alastair chips onto the 4th green. Bunkers like these are why you stay on the grass.

The approaches are cleverly done. Hidden fronts and dead ground hide where the green actually starts, and from the findable rough you need more club than the yardage says, again and again.

The 14th, probably on Old Tom’s ground: a marker pole, a flag and an orange shirt. Everything else is a matter of faith.

The greens were remarkable. It was a long dry spell and the fairways were straw-coloured, yet the putting surfaces were firm, true and green, better even than Luffness’s the day before. They were subtle too. I stood over a lot of putts I expected to make, and didn’t make them.

The 6th. A crow weighs up my ball on a fairway that hadn’t seen rain in weeks.
The 8th green: the drought breaks, and the umbrella finally earns its place on the trolley.

When the Scottish Open came to Gullane in 2015, the composite course took 16 holes from No 1 and borrowed No 2’s 7th and 8th, played as the 14th and 15th. The composite was used again in 2018. Those were my two worst holes: a bogey and a double, one Stableford point each. The Tour has the better of me there.

The 7th, borrowed for the Scottish Open: a green on the edge of the bank, with a squall crossing the Forth behind.

Many commentators consider the quality of a course’s winners a decent measure of the course. Gullane’s composite produced Rickie Fowler in 2015, then Brandon Stone in 2018 with a closing 60, a putt away from the Tour’s first 59. That same summer, Ariya Jutanugarn won the Ladies Scottish Open here, and the win took her to world number one. No fluke champions here.

It’s a touch of a curate’s egg, though. Between the great holes there are respite holes. No 2 has fewer bunkers than No 1, though far more than its near-twin No 3. And the 18th is weak: a flat 291-yard par 4 aimed at the clubhouse car park. I made par and felt no better for it.

The 18th: flat, short and pointed at the car park. Not the finish the rest of the course deserves.

At £100 for Summer midweek this is decent value for a course with Scottish Open pedigree and greens of this standard, and the £80 off-peak rates arguably make it a bargain. If No 1’s price makes you wince, and it should, No 2 is where to go. Better still, find yourself a friend like Alastair.

The 14th green with lupins in the dunes and Aberlady Bay beyond. Look at the colour of the green against the fairways around it.
Moly (left) and Alastair: the 19th, and a toast to the middle child.

Facts:

Course Type: Links
Par: 71 (2 par 5s, 13 par 4s, 3 par 3s)
Distance: 6,015 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope: 69.3 / 122
Course Quality: 4.5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 80
Scorecard:

Moly’s Gullane 2 scorecard, 9 over round in 80.

204. Luffness New. 19 Jun 23.

November 3, 2026 /

Shifting sands: the old club plays a new course, and the “New” club keeps the old one’s heirlooms.

Price Paid: Nil, as guests of a member
Current Price (2026): £210 a round summer (Mar-Oct); £110 winter (Nov-Feb)
Value Rating: Current list: summer 3.5/5, winter 5/5
Moly’s Score: 86 gross, 34 Stableford points, 32 putts

Luffness New sits between Aberlady and Gullane in East Lothian, about 18 miles east of Edinburgh. It’s a private members’ club, and Neil Hardman and I were the guests of David Macaulay, a member of long standing. What a treat.

The money shot: my drive from the elevated 8th tee, “March”. Parched fairways, bunkers lying in wait and open links to the horizon. It looks wide open. Don’t be deceived.

Top100 Golf Courses says Luffness New is “probably the oldest ‘new’ golf course in the world, dating back to 1867.” The club’s crest says “1894”. Both are actually correct, and that’s where it gets interesting. Many Scottish clubs invent age, creating a mirage of history. For example, Montrose renamed its championship course “1562” in 2018 (Blog 154), though in 1562 there was really no course there. Luffness does the opposite. It calls itself New and sits on more history than it lets on. Luffness takes a more humble approach.

The 1867 club was Luffness Golf Club, motto “Far and Sure”. That year Henry Walter Hope of Luffness gave Aberlady’s golfers land on the seaward side of the Peffer Burn, and Old Tom Morris laid out 17 holes within a month; an 18th followed in 1872. Maps of that course from 1870 and 1888 hang in Luffness New’s clubhouse.

Luffness Links in 1888: Old Tom’s course, running from the golf house by the Peffer Burn towards Gullane, with the bay at its feet. Note the Quarry, Hill, Well and Benty Holes. They’ll be back.

In 1893 the northern holes turned out to be on Gullane land, and Gullane’s owners wanted rent. Hope told the club not to pay and had Morris lay out a new course on his own ground. He called it Luffness Mill, still the name of the 1st hole. In 1894 about half the members went with it, as Luffness New. The rest stayed until the lease ran out in 1898, then accepted the Earl of Wemyss’s offer of land across the bay, and in 1899 that became Kilspindie.

That leaves a paradox. The old club, founded in 1867, gave up the Luffness name and moved to a new course. The new club kept the name, part of Old Tom’s ground, the maps, the members’ board and even the hole names. The 1888 map has a Quarry Hole, a Hill Hole, a Well Hole and a Benty Hole. Today’s card has Quarry (6th), Hill (7th), Benty (10th) and Well (13th). Most of the rest of the old links is now the Aberlady Bay Local Nature Reserve, with fragments under Gullane No.2 (Blog 205). And one last twist: Kilspindie’s “new” course takes in the Wanster ground, where Aberlady’s golfers played before 1867, perhaps the oldest golfing ground of the lot.

The new club’s captains’ board above the clubroom fire. First date: 1894. Lords, a Major, a Reverend and, from 1908, a Hope.
The old club’s members’ board, “Instituted in 1867”. H. W. Hope is President and the Earl of Wemyss Captain: the two landlords at the same table, a couple of years before the members went their separate ways. Look under B: “Balfour, A. J., M.P., Rt Hon.”, the future Prime Minister and one of the great golfing statesmen.

So Kilspindie kept the club (Luffness ‘Old’), and Luffness New kept the heirlooms. Montrose borrows a date it can’t quite justify; Luffness New plays down one it could almost claim. “Custodian” is about the right word. Gullane, Kilspindie and Luffness aren’t three neighbouring stories. They’re one story told on shifting sands, and the landlords have kept them shifting: the Wemyss estate that took in the old club in 1898 and has latterly has built Craigielaw (Blog 182) on land Kilspindie had hoped to use for a second course a century later. The next three blogs tell the rest.

From the 8th tee, the view the whole story turns on. Old Tom’s links ran along the ground towards the bay; across the water lie Aberlady and Kilspindie, where the old club went. David drives on regardless.

Now the golf. It blew a gale, on a course baked dry. What looks like a vast, open expanse is an illusion: the rough is penal, and the fairways are sometimes little more than a strip. The long par 4s were par 5s for me, and on the 173-yard 3rd David, a low single-figure golfer, took a wood. I spent the day hitting seven- and eight-irons approach shots that never rose more than 15 feet. It was honest golf, rewarding thought rather than muscle.

The 14th, “Aberlady”, 504 yards, aimed at the village it’s named after, in the stretch where Luffness New took over Old Tom’s ground. A carry over the wildflowers, a fairway narrowing all the way and the wind in your face. Luffness in one picture. I took seven, one of my two double bogies. I said on the tee “I’ll take a 7 and move on”.
The 13th, “Well”, 379 yards. Three balls, each after two shots, on fairways running like a motorway. None of us reached the green, a low single-figure player included. On a baked links, the wind is the first and last line of defence.

The bunkering is superb. Revetted pots sit exactly where a decent drive wants to finish, and the point is made straight away.

The 1st, “Luffness Mill”. Welcome to Luffness: six revetted pots strung across the fairway, 300-odd yards from the clubhouse door. No warm-up, no hiding place.
Today’s routing: the first four holes loop back to the clubhouse before the course heads west across the A198, towards the old links.

The greens are large, subtle and outstanding, and on surfaces this size pace is everything. I three-putted the 2nd but had five single putts and 32 in all. The course is lightly played, and it shows: fairways and tees were immaculate even with trolleys allowed on the tees, as at most Scottish links courses. It’s the same turf as Gullane No.1 (Blog 143), which I called unbeatable.

The 4th green, “Long”, where the opening loop returns to the clubhouse. A vast, firm surface where pace, not line, decides your score.
The 9th, “Inchkeith”, 407 yards and stroke index 1. Penalty stakes right, rough left, and the Firth of Forth all the way to Arthur’s Seat. Into the wind, a five felt like a birdie.

The clubhouse is a period piece: wood panelling, a log fire, jacket and tie after 9:45am. Shorts are allowed on the course, but only with knee-length socks. My friend Alastair Allanach told me that on a Monday it would be soup and sandwiches. It was a Monday. It was soup and sandwiches. The place feels like a boarding school, in both the best and the oddest sense. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I can see why people want it now and again.

Value. Top100 Golf Courses ranks Luffness New 45th in Scotland, and in Oct 2026 asked whether an expensive green fee means a better course. Its own figures say not necessarily: the median 2026 summer fee across 94 of the Top100-ranked Scottish courses is £140.

I paid nothing, so there’s no honest rating at price paid. The summer rate is £210 a round: £70 above Top100’s Scottish median and rising to £220 next year, though still £115 less than Gullane No.1’s £325 on the same turf. That’s 3.5/5. The winter rate, from 1 November, is £110, below the median for a top-50 links, and that’s where the value is: 5/5. That’s true right along this coast. Early November is when Scottish links golf offers its best value. Winter rates have arrived and the summer crowds have gone, but the ground is still firm and running, and the course is still the course, before winter sets in properly. Go to Luffness in early November, and price and quality line up rather well.

The 18th, “Home”. David and Neil, close colleagues at work, take teamwork one step too far: two balls, one pot bunker, one hole from the clubhouse. Everyone gets out sideways.

Facts:
Course Type: Links
Par: 70 (2 par 5s, 12 par 4s, 4 par 3s)
Distance: 5,982 yards (white tees)
Course Rating / Slope: 69.5 / 118
Course Quality: 5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 86

My 86 was one of his best, on a tough course in difficult conditions. What a joy.

203. Swanston. 18 Jun 23.

November 2, 2026 /

Treasure Island was written in Braemar. Swanston’s best golf was written on the hill.

Price Paid: £23 (GolfNow, Sunday afternoon)
Current Price (2026): £40 weekday / £50 weekend (summer list); £15 / £20 (winter list); GolfNow Hot Deals from £17
Value Rating: 4/5 at £23 paid / 4/5 at current GolfNow / 3/5 at current summer list
Moly’s Score: 82 gross, 36 Stableford points

The 12th green, with Edinburgh Castle on view.

Swanston sits about four miles south of Edinburgh city centre on the lower slopes of Caerketton Hill. Margaret Carswell, its founder, was a keen golfer who was refused membership by various Edinburgh clubs. Outraged at this, she set up her own ladies-only club here in 1928, and for that deserves a statue. She had spotted the land on a Pentland walk, took a lease, laid out nine holes and extended them to eighteen the following year, advised by her greenkeeper, Herbert More. The 2nd is called More’s Walk. The men were let in soon after.

Fran on the 2nd, More’s Walk, named after the greenkeeper who helped Margaret Carswell lay out the original course.

The club makes a bigger claim. Its history page says a sliced approach at the 1st lands in Robert Louis Stevenson’s garden, and that the adventures of Long John Silver were conceived there. The first part stands. Stevenson’s parents leased Swanston Cottage from 1867 to 1880, and he walked the Pentlands. Sadly, the book claim falls out of bounds. The Stevensons arrived in Braemar on 2 August 1881, where the first fifteen chapters of Treasure Island were written, after drawing a map to amuse his stepson. By then the Swanston lease had ended. Swanston’s real novel is St Ives, which has a chapter titled “Swanston Cottage”. The 10th hole is named St Ives; the scorecard knows its Stevenson story better than the website.

The 6th, Valley, from the tee. A 200-yard par 3 dropping into a bowl of gorse, and the best hole on the course.

The front nine is the reason to play. It is moorland golf: gorse, Scots pine, steep slopes and the Caerketton crags overhead. The 6th, Valley, is the pick, a long downhill par 3 into a green framed by bunkers and foxgloves. I made par and felt I’d earned it. The 7th, Shearie Knowe, is 140 yards uphill to a green on a knoll. I took six, having found very deep rough. The 8th, Plateau, is a 231-yard par 4 over the gorse, and I birdied it. Golf is not a fair game. After weeks without rain the fairways were like straw, but the greens were excellent.

The 6th green after a dry spell: crisp stripes on the putting surface, burnt grass everywhere else.
The 7th, Shearie Knowe, climbing towards Caerketton. A short hole and my only blob of the front nine.
The 8th, Plateau: 231 yards over the gorse to a green on the ridge. A birdie here, straight after a six.

On the 13th we met Bharal and Gurung, two Nepalese Gurkha soldiers serving at Redford Barracks. Golf is scarce in Nepal, with only seven courses, and these decent golfers were loving being in Scotland.

On the 13th with Bharal and Gurung of Redfern Barracks who knew a good front nine when they saw one.

So has the Lothianburn merger worked? It was barely a merger. Lothianburn’s membership fell from about 820 to 270 in under a decade, and the club closed in 2013 after 120 years; its clubhouse was its own, but its course had been leased from Swanston Farm, which took the land back. In April 2016 Swanston added two of Lothianburn’s holes, one of them now the 15th, named Lothianburn. Pylons and tree tubes give it a touch of the municipal.

The 15th, Lothianburn, one of two holes taken from the old club in 2016. Pylons overhead, tree tubes alongside, and a long way from the gorse.

The bigger change came earlier. In 2005 the owner, Colin McClung, hired Ronnie Lumsden and Graeme Tait to replace five holes on the course’s highest slopes. The work put six new holes on 30 hectares of farmland and raised par from 66 to 68. Tait himself admitted the farmland had lost most of its character and offered few features to design around. That is the open, flatter golf I found on the back nine. My instinct holds: the course is weaker than the land allows. But the culprit is not Lothianburn. It is the decision to swap the hill for the field. The 4th, incidentally, is named Gilbert McClung. It is a family farm, and the golf is one of its crops.

The farm’s other crops include a range, a par-3 course, footgolf and the Brasserie, opened in 2007. Next door is a small members’ bar that only did pies. It seemed an odd arrangement.

Value is simple. At £23 on GolfNow, the front nine alone justified the fee: 4/5. At £50 for a summer weekend, you are paying full price for nine holes of moorland and nine of farmland: 3/5. Book a Hot Deal, enjoy the view from the 12th, and save your energy for the 6th.

The 18th, Swanston Burn, playing towards the converted farm steading that now houses the clubhouse and Brasserie.

Facts:
Course Type: Moorland (front nine), parkland on former farmland (much of the back nine)
Par: 67 (1 par 5, 11 par 4s, 6 par 3s)
Distance: 5,401 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope: 66.8 / 113
Course Quality: 3.5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 82 (36 points)

Moly’s scorecard at Swanston, a decent 82

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