Scotland Golf Bible

A guide to green fee value for money

201. Douglas Water. 16 Jun 23.

October 31, 2026 /

Three seams of coal, one sand less ‘bunker’ and a £7 envelope.

Price Paid: £7 for nine holes (honesty box)
Current Price: Not published. In 2023 it was £7 for nine holes and £12 for eighteen.
Value: 3.5/5 at the price paid; current price to be confirmed
Moly’s Score: 48 gross, 13 Stableford points (nine holes)

The 1st green, aptly named Table, sits on a built-up shelf and was burnt to straw in the June sun. Miss short at your peril.

The day before, Newcastleton (Blog 200) had shown how not to collect a green fee. Douglas Water showed how it’s done. Envelopes in the porch for £7 cash, plus bank details for online payment. Everything in the fridge costs £1, from Irn Bru to a KitKat Chunky. An Uncle Sam poster reminds you the club depends on your honesty. ‘Simples’.

Uncle Sam wants your £7: the honesty box poster and the porch table, with envelopes, a £1 tuck shop and a payment link added in biro.

Playing alone, the only other person around was Jock, the part time greenkeeper who cuts the fairways for four or five hours each week. The club has about 70 members paying around £200 a year, which comes to roughly £14,000. A meagre existence, demonstrating golfing economics at the lower end of Scottish golf.

Jock told me the course sits on three old coal mines, with very little topsoil, and that the National Coal Board gave the land to the community when the pits closed. The first part stands up better than I expected. Three coal seams surface on this hillside, running into the ground at nearly 45 degrees. Generations of miners worked along the outcrops with picks, shovels and barrows, leaving three parallel lines of crop pits, which are now the humps and hollows you play over. The Rigside Colliery shaft was sunk right beside the present clubhouse in 1878, and its concrete engine foundations still stick out of the undergrowth.

Moly on the 1st. Two caps, one golfer, no one else on the course.

The club was formed in 1922 on the derelict land the pits had left behind, a quarter of a century before the NCB came into being. Whatever the Coal Board did later, it didn’t hand over a golf course. Nor did James Braid lay one out, whatever one online directory says. Douglas Water appears nowhere in the Association of James Braid Courses’ list of his 415 courses.

Hells Bunker at the 3rd, the only bunker on the course: a grassed pit with barely a grain of sand, which the scorecard insists is a bunker.

The old workings show most clearly at the 3rd, ‘Hells Bunker’. It is the only bunker on the course, and it contains no sand. The course was laid out around the deepest crop pits, and it’s hard to look into this one without suspecting it was dug by a collier rather than an architect. I found it, and took seven.

The 5th tee: a carry over heather, with a mown strip through the middle. Wide fairways, but this is what waits on either side.

The course is basic but more testing than the price suggests. The fairways are generous, but the rough is heather and thick grass, and anything that goes in stays there. The older members have complained about it..apparently! The greens were poor in a dry June. Several are raised on plateaus and squared off, almost certainly because there was no soil to shape them any other way. The ground still settles, which means constant work on the drainage and on keeping the greens level.

Approaching the 6th, one of the square greens, with the scar of an opencast working on the hills beyond. The coalfield never leaves the view.

The hole names are pure Lanarkshire: Saur Trauchle By, Guid Skelp, Smiddy, Oot o’ Sicht. The 6th is called Water Hole, but I couldn’t find any water on it, making my par perhaps easier than it should be.

The 6th, Water Hole: not a drop in sight, and a green baked to straw.

When the last pit in Douglas Water closed in 1967, much of the population left, and the station, the football club and most of the local services followed. The golf club didn’t. More than a hundred years after it was laid out on the coalfield’s leftovers, it is still run on trust and a part-time mower. Nobody would call it a great course. At £7, that isn’t the point. It’s 3.5/5 and I’d happily put another envelope in the box.

Facts:
Course Type: Inland hilltop parkland with heather rough
Par: 36 for nine holes (2 par 5s, 5 par 4s, 2 par 3s); 72 over 18
Distance: 2,951 yards (whites)
Course Rating / Slope: SSS 69 (18 holes, from the scorecard); no Course Rating or Slope published
Course Quality: 2/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 48 (13 Stableford points)

Moly’s Douglas Water scorecard. 48.

200. Newcastleton.15 Jun 23.

October 30, 2026 /

The village won back its hill from the Duke. The grass won it back from the village.

Price Paid: £15 (9 holes), paid at the village Spar after the round
Current Price (2026): £20 day ticket; no 9-hole rate listed
Value Rating: 1/5 at £15 or £20
Moly’s Score: 50 gross, 11 Stableford points (9 holes)

The 7th fairway in mid-June: buttercups, daisies and clover. I made par here. Don’t ask how.

Two hundred blogs, and the milestone falls on a 1/5 for value. Fran and I drove over the hill from Langholm (Blog 199) the same afternoon. Langholm had been everything a rural nine-holer should be: a tenner in the honesty box, the toilet code left with the scorecards, small true greens. Newcastleton was chalk to Langholm’s cheese.

The clubhouse: corrugated, blue and shut. No box, no toilets, little clue where to pay.

The clubhouse was locked. There was no box and no notice with bank details. I’ve paid at a good many honesty boxes around Scotland, and the trend is towards a sign with a sort code so you can pay from your phone on the first tee. Newcastleton was the first to send me to a shop. A notice behind the glass listed the Spar, a café and the caravan park. I played, then paid after; what else were you expected to do? The club website said £12.50; the Spar said £15. To be fair to the Spar, the club’s own board agreed with it. It was the website that was out of date. The next day, Douglas Water (Blog 201) showed how it’s done: an envelope, a box in the porch and £7 for nine holes.

The 2023 fee board, apostrophes and all. £15 for nine holes, payable anywhere except at the golf course.

There’s a bigger story on this hill. Newcastleton is a planned village, laid out in 1793 by the third Duke of Buccleuch for hand-loom weavers. In 2020 the community trust bought 750 acres of Holm Hill, the hill the course sits on, back from the Buccleuch estate. Among the plans was a new clubhouse for the golf club. When we played, three years later, the blue tin hut was still there, and it looked as though nobody had been round with a mower for a fortnight.

The 3rd: one strip cut and left, clippings dead where they fell, and the rough marching in from both sides.

That’s a shame, because underneath there is a proper course. It’s a substantial layout climbing Holm Hill, very difficult first time round, with a 452-yard par-4 9th. There’s not a bunker on it, and like Langholm it doesn’t need one; the hill does the work. But the greens were not really greens. The 1st was fairway length, with a ragged cup sitting proud and five fresh droppings a foot from the hole. Take my score of 50 with a pinch of salt.

The 1st green. Someone had been round before us and left their card.

I did make a 2 at the 106-yard 2nd, “Wee Hill”, played uphill to a flag that barely shows over the crest. The slate tee sign announces it as the 11th? The tee signs are half lost to lichen and bracken. On the 3rd stands what looks like a retired bus shelter, with a sapling growing through the bench.

The 2nd, “Wee Hill”: 106 yards uphill, bracken left, divots unrepaired. My birdie. My only one.
Alongside the 3rd fairway: shelter from the storm, if you can reach the bench. The next bus is not expected.

The club says the course is managed and maintained by its members, and calls its clubhouse “such as it is”. Fran and I were Ladies Captain and Club Captain of Isle of Wedmore in 2025, so we know what volunteers give. But if the volunteers can’t keep the course in a state to charge for, the honest answer is to keep it members only rather than take £15 from visitors, half as much again as Langholm’s tenner, for a course in a far worse state. Today’s £20 is double. There was also no toilet, which is fine for me but not for Fran, who wisely walked rather than played.

The 6th, ‘The Quarry’. The sign is in the same state as the course.

The club now lists bank transfer as a way to pay, so one complaint has been answered. The rest is down to the mower. Value is 1/5 at £15 and 1/5 at today’s £20 day ticket. Should I have played? Probably not. But when you’ve driven all the way there…

The approach to the 9th, with Liddesdale beyond. The best view on the course, and an 8 on the card. The setting deserves better.

Facts:
Course Type: Hillside parkland
Par: 34 (7 par 4s, 2 par 3s); 69 over 18 from second-nine tees
Distance: 2,654 yards, white tees (9 holes)
Course Rating / Slope: 67.5 / 111 (18 holes)
Course Quality: 1/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 50 (9 holes), 11 Stableford points

Moly’s Newcastleton Scorecard – 50, including a 2 on the 2nd

199. Langholm. 15 Jun 23.

October 30, 2026 /

What will they affix to the golf course to measure your legacy?

Price Paid: £10, honesty box
Current Price (2026): £10 (third-party listings; the club just says “extremely reasonable”)
Value Rating: 4/5 at price paid / 4/5 at current price (not on GolfNow)
Moly’s Score: 44 gross, 16 Stableford points (9 holes)

The 2nd tee on Whita Hill, the fairway tumbling towards the Esk valley. The yellow umbrella is on Fran’s trolley, not over her head. She had no need of shade from that much sky.

Langholm doesn’t take your money. Like many rural nine-hole courses in Scotland, it trusts you to hand it over. A box by the first tee, a slot for your tenner, a pile of scorecards and the code for the toilet.

The club dates from 1892 and sits on the lower slopes of Whita Hill above the town. It is not easy first time round. There are blind tee shots, burns and ditches across the fairways at exactly the wrong (or right?) distance, and greens small enough that “on in regulation” is an achievement. Driving is hard due to narrow and sloping fairways. The only sand on the course guards the 9th. Langholm doesn’t need bunkers; the land does the work.

The 8th: an elevated tee over a gully of scrub to a fairway you can only half see. Regulars know where the ditch is. Visitors find out.

Then there’s the 4th. A par 3 of 156 yards, played down a chute between rhododendrons and a wall of conifers, the flag barely visible. I made a 2 there and felt pleased with myself for about four minutes, until I found the plaque behind the green.

The 4th: a 156-yard shot down a chute of conifers to a small green beside the wood, and the plaque that sits behind it.

On 31 July 2005, in a match against Kirkby Lonsdale, Andrew Porteous holed his tee shot at the 4th. On the second nine he came back to the same tee and did it again. The figure usually quoted for an amateur making two holes in one in a single round is 67 million to one. Doing it twice at the same hole needs a nine-hole course just to be possible. The plaque spells the opponents “Kirby Lonsdale”. I’d like to think nobody had the heart to correct it to “Kirkby”.

Fran putting on the 3rd. The greens are small, true and, in a dry June, quicker than they look.

It struck me what a good legacy that is. Most of us leave a name on an honours board if we’re lucky. Andrew Porteous left a reason for every visitor to stop on the walk from the 4th green to the next tee. And he hasn’t gone anywhere: he was club captain for 2025/26, welcoming visitors on the club’s website. That feels right for a club run on trust and volunteers. My 2 on the 4th will be remembered only by me.

Langholm has a grander claim too. Its first captain, Thomas Moses, was a director of Reid & Taylor, the Langholm cloth makers, and it’s widely repeated that Reid & Taylor makes the cloth for Augusta’s Green Jackets. However, Augusta’s own story points elsewhere: American reporting names Georgia-milled tropical wool, made up by a tailor in Cincinnati. Reid & Taylor may have supplied Augusta at some point, but I couldn’t find the evidence. The plaque on the 4th needs no such help.

The 7th green, the short par 4 the club calls its signature hole, with a ravine short and right and out of bounds behind.

At £10 this is good value: a properly testing nine holes in fine condition, in a setting most clubs would charge at least twice as much for. It stops short of 5/5 because the blind shots punish a first visit and the greens are too small to make every bounce fair. It’s a bit out of the way, but worth the detour if you’re on the A7.

The 9th green and clubhouse, guarded by the only bunkers on the course.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland
Par: 35 (1 par 5, 6 par 4s, 2 par 3s)
Distance: 2,936 yards, yellow tees
Course Rating / Slope: 34.3 / 126
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 44 (9 holes), 16 Stableford points

Moly’s Langholm Scorecard – 44, including a 2 on the 4th

198. Lockerbie. 3 May 23.

October 29, 2026 /

Lockerbie: a good course in ‘Chapter 11’. I hope it finds a way out.

Price Paid: c. £17 (GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £30 weekdays / £35 weekends list (Apr-Oct), £20 Nov-Mar; GolfNow £18–20
Value: 3.5/5 at price paid and current GolfNow / 3/5 at current list
Moly’s Score: 87 gross, net 74, 30 Stableford points

The 8th, Little Ponds: 118 yards over water to a green backed by conifers. The prettiest hole on the course and, for once, a par.

Lockerbie Golf Club’s website says the original nine holes, laid out when the club was founded in 1889, were designed by “the legendary James Braid”. Braid was 19 in 1889. He was a joiner in Earlsferry and didn’t turn professional until 1896. Unless the club hired a teenage Fife joiner to lay out a course 150 miles from home, two dates have been merged into one sentence. One directory puts Braid’s involvement at 1927, as a redesign, which would at least fit his career. I couldn’t find a primary source for it. The 4th is called “Braids Special”, which looks like the Brechin pattern (Blog 28): one visit, a few suggestions, then a century of creep. Lockerbie is nonetheless a member of the Association of James Braid Courses. So is Lochmaben, four miles down the road.

The 4th, “Braids Special”, sponsored by a packaging firm and a High Street solicitor. Whatever Braid did here, local businesses are doing the lifting now.

Whoever designed it, the course makes good use of its ground. It sits on a rise above the town, with views over Annandale and, on a clear day, to the Lake District. The holes have real variety: a pond carry at the 8th, a long par 3 at the 5th, and my favourite, the par 3 16th, Queensberry View. It isn’t too tough, which is exactly what a society course should be, and for years that’s what Lockerbie was.

The best hole on the course for me, the Stroke Index 5, par 3 16th hole.

The routing is the weak point. Nine holes were added in 1986, and the parallel fairways running up and down the slope look like the product of several reshuffles, well that’s my hunch.

The routing around Lockerbie. It must have changed over the years?

Condition, on the day, was poor. The fairways were freckled with daisies, the bunkers were compacted and weedy, and rakes were scarce. The 18th green was patchy. In fairness, I played in early May with the course still shaking off a wet winter, and the tees were excellent: flat, firm and well cut. A summer visit would be a fairer measure.

The bunker on the par four 6th, The Beeches: compacted sand, weeds and a lone rake. Volunteers can only be in so many places at once.

The clubhouse was the saddest part. It was tired and run down, and the locals told me food was now a rarity. They put the membership at under 200, paying around £450 a year, with much of the maintenance supported by volunteers. The public record backs up the gist. In 2016 the club asked its landlord, the Lockerbie and Lochmaben Common Good Fund, for a rent cut. In 2018 it lost 24 members in a year and needed £60,000 for drainage. In late 2020 the council served notice to end its lease. Covid brought a membership bounce and a reprieve, and a five-year deal with a local wind farm company is worth £10,000 a year, roughly the subscriptions of 22 members. Add the sponsors’ boards on every tee and you have a club the town clearly still wants.

Fran teeing on the par three 5th, the longest of the five par 3s at 196 yards from red.

So has the town outgrown its club? No. Lockerbie had 2,029 people in 1881 and has around 4,200 today. What has changed is the car. A Victorian town course was built for golfers who walked to it. Today’s golfer can just as easily drive four miles to Lochmaben. As with Maybole (Blog 193), what decides survival at this end of Scottish golf isn’t the size of the town. It’s whether you’re the course people choose within a fifteen-minute drive.

Drove Road, the par four 3rd: a lone tree in mid-fairway, daisies underfoot and the hills beyond. Pretty, as long as you don’t look down.

On the night of 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a terrorist bomb over the town. All 259 people on board and 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed. The victims fell across a wide area, including this golf course and the fields beside it. TIME reported at the time that sixty were recovered from the course. I played it on an ordinary spring afternoon nearly 35 years later, and it felt like an ordinary town course. It isn’t, quite, and the history of the course can’t escape that dreadful night. The town’s memorial garden is at Dryfesdale Cemetery, on the other side of Lockerbie, and worth a prayer.

The 18th green, Home, looking out over Lockerbie and the Annandale valley.

I came away harsher than Lockerbie deserves, and I think the clubhouse did most of the talking. A golf course is like a set of accounts: a snapshot, not a verdict. Lockerbie is in ‘Chapter 11’. Companies come out of Chapter 11, and the bones here are good. At around £17 through GolfNow it’s 3.5/5, and 3/5 at the £30 list price. Get the greens and bunkers right, and both numbers go up. I’m not convinced it will make it. I’d very much like to be wrong, and I’d like to go back in summer to find out.

Me on the 15th tee, St Blane’s. The tees were the best-kept thing on the course.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland
Par: 67 (0 par 5s, 13 par 4s, 5 par 3s)
Distance (yellow): 5,334 yards
Course Rating/Slope: 65.9 / 115 (yellow)
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 87

Moly’s 87 at Lockerbie, included only 2 over par on the five par 3s.

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