Scotland Golf Bible

A guide to green fee value for money

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

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. 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 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. 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

202. West Linton. 17 Jun 23.

November 1, 2026 /

A schoolmaster with a trowel, a committee with two greenkeepers, and James Braid’s name on the booking sites.

Price Paid: £33 via GolfNow (a £25 GolfPass voucher took it to £8, but vouchers aren’t prices)
Current Price (2026): £65 weekday round, £75 weekend round (list); twilight £45 weekday, £50 weekend; GolfNow typically £47 to £55 in summer
Value: 5/5 at £33 / 4/5 at current GolfNow / 3.5/5 at list
Moly’s Score: 98 gross, 84 nett

The 6th, “Mendick”, from the forward tee. Heather down the left, pines down the right, and Mendick Hill on the skyline giving the hole its name.

West Linton is a conservation village in the Scottish Borders, historically Peeblesshire, 17 miles south-west of Edinburgh on the A702, tucked under the southern end of the Pentland Hills. In 1863 a young St Andrews graduate called Robert Millar came to teach here. Like many students, he had found a love of the game playing St Andrews Links, but West Linton didn’t have a course. So every morning before school, in black frock coat, choker and full beard, he hit balls around the village parks in all weathers. The villagers decided he was eccentric. It took him twenty-seven years to convince them otherwise.

The railway arrived in 1864, bringing walkers and anglers, and Millar reckoned golfers would follow. It still took until June 1890 for him to call a meeting in the school, where he made the minister captain, the banker treasurer, and appointed himself secretary. The tenant of North Slipperfield let them a heather-covered grouse moor for £5 a year. According to the West Linton Historical Association, the exiled King Charles X of France had once come there to shoot. Millar, the only golfer in the room, went out with a former pupil and cut nine holes with trowels, marking the tees with logs. Members were advised to keep right of the central bog.

The board in the clubhouse credits the schoolmaster. A weekend round was 7/-. Sunday golf cost extra, which tells you the board isn’t Victorian. Based on the pricing I calculate this sign is from the 1950s.

GolfNow and the many golfing directories list the architect as James Braid, who visited in 1926. He drew a map and wrote a report: mostly new tees and bunkers, a new 4th, and the 6th and 7th merged into one. That was advice on the original nine-hole course. The second nine wasn’t built until the early 1970s, cheaply, by a three-man sub-committee and a couple of greenkeepers, and was opened by Eric Brown and Bernard Gallagher in September 1974. Therefore, half the holes postdate Braid by nearly fifty years, and the other half were laid out by a schoolmaster. Braid improved West Linton; he didn’t design it.

Whoever deserves the credit, it’s a very good course. Heather, pine and birch, open fairways, and genuine carries from several tees. The greens are the best feature, varied in shape. The bunkering does its job. Find the sand and you pay for it.

The 3rd, “Syke Burn”. A carry over heather into a corridor of pines. Miss left or right and you are reloading.

I played with Fran. The course was very dry and the greens were rock hard; approach shots pitched and kept going, and that is my official explanation for 98. The turf was good, the woodland floors were tidy, and Ian the pro, formerly of Shotts, could not have been friendlier. The 15th, “Lang Whang”, is named after the lonely A70 moorland road over the Pentlands (“whang” is Scots for a bootlace). From the yellows it is a 453-yard par 4. I took eight.

The 13th, “MacKellar’s Wood”. Typical of my luck on the day. Look at the ground under the trees, though: mown, cleared and findable. This course is looked after.
The 4th, “Lucky Dip”. A resident pheasant, unbothered by my approach, on a fairway parched by a dry June.

Value? I paid £33 on GolfNow, and at that price this is 5/5. A Golfpass voucher brought it to only £8, which happens to be roughly what Millar’s 7/- weekend round would be worth today, if the board is from the 1950s. Prices have moved up since. Today the list price is £65 weekday and £75 weekend, with GolfNow around £47 to £55. The course is no worse, but it isn’t twice as good either. At GolfNow rates it’s 4/5; at list, 3.5/5.

The 14th, “Westwater”. Bracken to carry, a drystone dyke on the left, and a fairway striped and baked.
The 18th, “Home”. From the yellows it’s a 222-yard par 3, uphill to the clubhouse. Not a gentle finish.

Would I go back? Yes, at the right price.

Facts:
Course Type: Heathland
Par: 68 (1 par 5, 12 par 4s, 5 par 3s)
Distance: 5,867 yards (yellow)
Course Rating / Slope: 68.7 / 121
Course Quality: 4/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 98

West Linton Scorecard, 98, that doesn’t take away from what a great course this is.

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.

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