Scotland Golf Bible

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Category: Links (Page 1 of 12)

196. Girvan.1 May 23.

October 25, 2026 /

Is this where the Girvan Gang played?

Price Paid – £15 (GolfNow)
Current Price – £24 list (2026); £17 GolfNow
Value – 4/5 at £15 / [GolfNow tbc] / 3.5/5 at £24
Moly’s Score – 81 gross (31 Stableford points)

Moly off the 5th tee, aiming straight at Ailsa Craig. 171 yards of links, and the wind decides the club.

In my Turnberry Ailsa blog (Blog 188) I introduced the Girvan Gang. In a letter of 1751 they appear as a gaggle of lairds, a minister and a doctor playing golf at Girvan, with Sir John adjudicating both the golf and the drinking. That was three years before the St Andrews golfers formed their Society. So where did they play?

Nobody wrote it down. In a town of about a thousand souls there were only two candidates: the town green, now Stair Park and rows of Victorian villas, or the shore north of the river, where holes one to eight run today. My money is on the shore. If I’m right, Girvan’s first eight holes may be the oldest golfing ground still in play in Ayrshire.

Moly on the 1st tee, off the whites. Firth on the left, Arran on the horizon, and the old shore turf ahead.

The documented story is just as good. In 1892 Girvan’s golfers held an open-air meeting on the ruins of Turnberry Castle and formed a club to play the Turnberry links. Nine years later, when their nine-hole course north of the river was sold for villas, they moved there. Turnberry, in effect, was founded by Girvan. But Turnberry was five miles away and too far for winter golf. So in 1903 the town leased 40 acres of shore, and David Kinnell of Prestwick St Nicholas laid out nine holes on it. He thought them the finest of their size. Directories still credit James Braid. I can find no evidence he did anything here.

Fran off the 2nd, Arran across the water.

The Course

The eight links holes are a delight: firm, rumpled and wind-blown, with a run of brutal par 3s. From the whites, the 3rd is 220 yards, the 7th is 215 and the 8th is 243. It’s the kind of small, magical links that could stand beside Shiskine on Arran, the sort you’d travel just to play.

Ailsa Craig wearing its cloud cap behind the 5th green. Golf has been played on this shore since at least 1891, a decade before Turnberry existed.

Then you cross the road. In 1911 the members, wanting to “remove the congestion”, took a field along the river and extended to 18 holes. The council took the course over in the 1920s and bought it outright in 1926 for £3,000. So the council didn’t make the parkland, but it has had a century to put things right and hasn’t. Of those ten inland holes, two are good, maybe three if you’re generous to the 18th. The rest are flat field golf with a river attached, and the backdrop changes from Ailsa Craig to William Grant’s grain distillery, the Girvan end of the family that gives the world Glenfiddich and, from these very stills, Hendrick’s gin.

Looking back from the 8th tee along the old raised beach. In 1903 the papers praised the “range of hills” sheltering the course. The town Kinnell’s golfers walked from sits at the far end.
The 16th green, under the gaze of Hendrick’s gin. From Ailsa Craig to the distillery in eight holes.

In fairness, the bunkering is excellent throughout, and the island bunker at the 12th is genuinely handsome.

Something worth photographing on the inland half: the island bunker at the 12th.

The Oddities

The clubhouse sits on the road between the two halves, the starter’s hut sits somewhere else, and the starter was the grumpiest I’ve met in a while. On a municipal course, the person at the hut is the welcome. Get that wrong and nothing else recovers it.

The tee colours run white, red, yellow, with yellow as the shortest set for everyone. The stroke indices differ between tees: the 15th is SI 1 off white and SI 7 off red. Fran spotted the yellows were the forward tees and played them, so she got the shortest yardage but ladies’ par 65, with the long par 3s staying par 3s.

Girvan’s handicap board: white, red, yellow, in that order. Visitors, take note.

The Missed Opportunity

The practice green beside the starter’s box looks very much like an old 9th. Behind it, nearer the town, there’s a strip of land that could make Girvan a proper nine-hole links. How many Scottish towns have swapped a brilliant nine for a mediocre 18? Girvan is the clearest case I’ve seen. The council could give the town its links back, the ground where the Girvan Gang may have played, untouched and uncrafted. It hasn’t.

The Verdict

At £15 on GolfNow, 4/5: the front eight alone are worth it. At £24, 3.5/5. Would I go back? For the front eight, gladly.

Facts:
Course Type: Links (holes 1–8) / Parkland (9–18)
Par: 64 (no par 5s, 10 par 4s, 8 par 3s)
Distance: 5,086 yards (white)
Course Rating / Slope: 64.5 / 105
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 81 (net 69, 31 Stableford)

Moly’s scorecard, gross 81

195. Troon Links (Fullarton). 30 Apr 23.

October 25, 2026 /

The junior course, priced like one. Usually.

Price Paid: £19.99 (GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £28 list; GolfNow £23.99–£25.99 (October)
Value Rating: 4/5 at £19.99 / 4/5 at current GolfNow / 3.5/5 at list
Moly’s Score: 80 gross, 33 Stableford points

The 4th from the yellow tees, a 300-yard corridor of whin, heather and Scots pine; Fullarton in a single frame.

The day before, I played Lochgreen (Blog 194) for £19.99 on GolfNow. The next afternoon, I played Fullarton for £19.99 on GolfNow. Same clubhouse, same starter, same price.

They are not the same course. Lochgreen is 6,473 yards from the yellows, par 74, and was an Open qualifying course for forty years. Fullarton is 4,724 yards, par 66, with six par 3s and not a single par 5 on the men’s card. I assumed the council had simply priced all three alike. I was wrong, and it is worth explaining why.

Golf South Ayrshire’s list price for Fullarton is £28, against £38 for Lochgreen and Darley. That isn’t a rate per yard. Plenty of courses under 5,000 yards are worth far more than £28, and charge it. It is a ranking: Fullarton is the junior course of the three, and it is priced as one. On the quality of what’s here, that’s about right. The current GolfNow rates keep a similar gap. In April 2023, though, the discount algorithm briefly priced Lochgreen and Fullarton the same. On that weekend, the bargain was next door.

The 7th green and the reason for my 6. One of Fullarton’s few bunkers, and I found it.

Fullarton is a nice little course, routed through whin and pine. The bunkering is minimal and the greens are very small, so the defence is accuracy rather than sand. Miss a small green and you are chipping from tight turf. Miss the fairway and you are in the whin. It was also in better condition than either Lochgreen or Darley, less beaten up.

The routing is not obvious, so keep the scorecard map handy, as the 8th and 9th sit amongst the back 9 holes. I went out in 38 gross for 20 points, then came home in 42 for 13. The 173-yard 12th earned a 6 and a blank. Final tally: 80 gross, 33 points.

The 11th, 199 yards: the longest of the six par 3s and a small target. The sky cleared just in time for the back nine.

Golf South Ayrshire sells Fullarton at £28 as a quick round for beginners, and should take less than three hours. The marketing copy is less reliable than the pricing, though. Its own GolfNow blurb promises eight par 3s; the scorecard has six. The GolfNow listing gives Fullarton a par of 71 and 6,785 yards, roughly Lochgreen’s length.

Who designed it, and when? Nobody seems to know. GolfNow says 1905. One app credits Joe Finger in 1983, a Texan who as far as I can tell never designed a hole in Scotland. Another says 1973, the year Troon Welbeck Golf Club was founded. Wikipedia hints that the course came with the Fullarton estate after the council bought it.

The 9th, a 133-yard par 3 with the edge of town behind the green. Fullarton was once the grounds of an estate; now the houses come right up to the course.

That estate has its own story. Fullarton House was built in 1745 and sold in the early 1800s to the Marquis of Titchfield, later the 4th Duke of Portland. The same family’s land gave Royal Troon its links across the railway. The council bought the house in 1928 and demolished it in 1966; the stables survive as Fullarton Courtyard. That is a story for another blog, and a reminder that the same Duke supplied the Open course and the town’s courses.

At £19.99 or the current GolfNow rate, Fullarton is good value at 4/5. At £28 list it is a fair 3.5/5. It is a short, quick, well-kept links, priced for exactly the golfers it is meant for.

Troon Links trilogy: Darley (Blog 136) for the money, Lochgreen (Blog 194) for the Open.

Facts:
Course Type: Inland links
Par: 66 (12 par 4s, 6 par 3s)
Distance: 4,724 yards (yellow)
Course Rating / Slope: 61.6 / 99
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 80 (33 points)

Moly’s card, 80

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.


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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