Scotland Golf Bible

Bandit at Dunbar? The verdict: not proven.

Price Paid: Member’s guest.
Current Price (2026): £195 Mon–Wed, £225 Friday, £265 weekends (April–October); twilight £165 Mon–Wed from 14:30.
Value Rating: Current twilight: 4/5 / Current list: 3/5
Moly’s Score: 80 gross, 42 Stableford points (Card has 43, see below for detail)

Club golf has no higher compliment than the enquiry “what did you say your handicap is?”. By the 4th green I was six under my handicap and the dreaded word “bandit” had been alluded to, fully justified in my opinion. The witnesses were Jim Taylor, a Dunbar member, excellent golfer and our host; Mark Wright, an Edinburgh eye surgeon, so presumably the best-qualified judge of what he’d seen; and Mike Johnstone, cycling buddy of Mark, who had hosted me at Kilspindie (Blog 206) two days earlier and set up the game.

Dunbar Golf Club’s East Links sits on the eastern edge of Dunbar, East Lothian, about 30 miles east of Edinburgh. There was a West Links but that closed more than a century ago. It’s a thin strip of links squeezed between an old red sandstone wall and a rocky shore. The club traces itself to a golfing society of 1794. In 1856 it laid out fifteen holes on the seaward side of the wall. Old Tom Morris altered seven holes in 1894, and the present layout largely dates from 1922–24, when James Braid and Ben Sayers extended it. So the course’s place in the Braid Atlas, developed by Scott Cook, is a genuine credit, not a courtesy. Dunbar has hosted Final Qualifying for the Open four times when the Open went to Muirfield, most recently in 2014.

My start was ridiculous. On the 1st my third shot nearly dropped for an eagle, so I settled for a birdie from 6 inches. On the par five 2nd I was on in two and three-putted for the kind of par professionals hate. On the 3rd, Jackson’s Pennies, I hit the tee shot to six feet and holed another birdie. A par on four left me at 2 under with 13 stableford points, albeit card shows 14.

So why do we play this well so seldom? Because the handicap system is built that way. Your index is the average of your best eight score differentials from your last twenty rounds. The other twelve don’t count. A handicap measures what you can do, not what you usually do, so most of the time you’ll fall short of it. My differential that day was 8.7 against an index of 13.4. That’s unusual, but it’s a long way short of the 7.0 gap that triggers an automatic cut. I wasn’t a bandit. I was just having my good day.

Now the confession. I wrote 15 on the card. Off the yellows the correct figure is 14, because I applied the slope and forgot to subtract the course rating’s 0.6 below par. That one stroke fell on the 3rd. So it was 42 points, not 43, and five under after four holes, not six. My playing partners were right, but only by one shot.

The front and back nine balance is the course’s one weakness. The front nine is par 37 with three par 5s; the back nine is par 34 with none. It isn’t a true out-and-back either, and the holes are so closely adjoined the fairways are at times double the width. The answer is in part a new clubhouse, funded by CALA Homes and approved in October 2022. The club expects it to open by the end of 2026, but the plans promise only a “slight alteration” to the course itself.

The wall that runs alongside most of the course is said to have been built by Napoleonic prisoners of war. Links Magazine states this as fact. Bunkered calls it a tale from the caddies. The official listing for the Broxmouth Park walls gives no builder or date at all. The verdict is the Scottish one: not proven.

The land has a better story than the wall. The Dukes of Roxburghe owned the links until 1960, when they sold up to Portland Cement. For half a century the club’s landlord was the cement company whose chimneys you can see from the 13th. The club only bought its own course in 2011. Add Torness power station, the landfill and the lighthouse, and the views are the most industrial of any top-class links I know. The course is immaculate regardless.

Then came the 11th, Girgie Mire. My approach was perfect until it caught the lip of a bunker. Seven shots, no points. Every bandit needs one hole that proves he’s human.

The word bandit itself comes from the Italian bandito, a man placed under a ban: an outlaw by proclamation. In golf it’s a synonym for a sandbagger, and nobody seems to know when golf borrowed it. A handicap committee’s version of the proclamation is a cut. Mine came shortly thereafter in the season, and Cruden Bay and Aberdeenshire Opens will tell that story.

As for value, Dunbar is a 5 star quality course. At £195 midweek, I’d give it 3/5. The twilight rate of £165 lifts it to 4, given the quality and the exorbitant neighbouring prices (Gullane No 1, North Berwick, etc). Would I go back? In a heartbeat, preferably as somebody’s guest, and preferably with the same game.

Facts:
Course Type: Links
Par: 71 (3 par 5s, 11 par 4s, 4 par 3s)
Distance: 6,196 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope: 70.4 / 124
Course Quality: 5/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 80 (42 Stableford points on the correct course handicap of 14)