Scotland Golf Bible

A guide to green fee value for money

Category: Parkland (Page 1 of 27)

197. Seafield. 2 May 23.

October 27, 2026 /

Belleisle’s little sister. Born on a racecourse, raised in the shadow of a more renowned sibling.

Price Paid: £19.99 (GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £32 list; £32 GolfNow, with hot deals from £21
Value: 4/5 at £19.99 / 3/5 at £32 / 4/5 at £21
Moly’s Score: 85 gross, nett 73, 31 Stableford points (off 12)

Fran with her approach on the 17th. This is not typical of what Seafield looks like, most is flat and easy walking.

My final South Ayrshire council course, and the smaller of the two within Belleisle Park. Seafield shares its estate, pro shop and car park with Belleisle (Blog 189), and GolfNow calls it “Belleisle’s Little Sister.” That’s fair, but the family history is more interesting than the nickname.

Long before golf, there were horses. Ayr races were run at Seafield from 1771 on an oval with bends likely to unseat a jockey. Its patrons included the Earl of Eglinton, the Duke of Portland and the Caledonian Hunt, to whom Burns dedicated his Edinburgh edition in 1787. The Ayr Gold Cup, one of the UK’s richest sprint handicaps, was raced here. In 1907 the track was judged too small for racing which moved to Craigie. Part of the old oval became part of Seafield golf course.

The 1st, from the elevated tee down into the burn valley. It’s a fine opening view, and one of only a handful of holes with any real change in height.

When golf started here is less clear. A 1988 greenkeeping article says nine holes were laid out inside the racecourse in 1904, which would have meant golfers dodging racehorses for three years. GolfNow says 1907, then “redesigned by James Braid in 1927.” A long-standing course list says 1930. Braid certainly designed Belleisle in 1927. For Seafield, I couldn’t find an independent source that names him, and the 1988 article calls it the “poor relation.” I suspect the Braid credit came across from big sister along with the shared car park. Until someone shows me a plan with his name on it, it’s unproven.

Behind the 12th green: View House, once the racecourse grandstand. Today it’s boarded-up arches and a toilet block.

The racing connection still stands. View House, built in 1867 by the Ayr architect James McDerment, provided changing rooms and viewing terraces for the Western Meeting and by 1957 was a golf clubhouse. It isn’t anyone’s clubhouse now. Belleisle got the smart new building. Seafield got the leftovers of the racecourse.

Moly lining up a putt on the 13th beneath ivy-clad Scots pines and the old estate wall. The greens were in good order, with the wall in play on a few holes.

The golf is pleasant. At 5,452 yards off the whites, par 68 with no par 5s, it’s short but not trivial. Fourteen par 4s give it a steady rhythm, and the four par 3s ask enough questions. It sits in a more salubrious part of Ayr than Dalmilling (Blog 192), and it feels like it. The turf and greens were good, and most of the course is flat parkland. The burn valley only comes into play on the 1st and 16th, which are the holes people photograph. I went out in 40 and came home in 45 for 31 points, respectable rather than memorable.

Moly driving off the 16th across the burn and footbridge, with the fairway climbing to the bunkers. This is Seafield at its most dramatic, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Two gripes. There were too few rakes for the number of bunkers. And the café was shut by 3.30pm on a spring afternoon. South Ayrshire markets this place to the world as part of its golf coast. I’m not sure what an American visitor makes of finishing 18 holes in Burns country and finding nowhere to buy a cup of tea.

The 14th, a very typical hole at Seafield

At £19.99 on GolfNow, Seafield is a well-kept, enjoyable 18 holes for less than a round of drinks in the clubhouse it doesn’t have. That’s 4/5. At £32 list you’re paying a full municipal fee for the lesser course, with Belleisle next door. That’s 3/5. The £21 hot deals bring it back to 4/5. It’s a minor course, honestly priced when discounted, and its history is more interesting than its golf.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland
Par: 68 (0 par 5s, 14 par 4s, 4 par 3s)
Distance: 5,452 yards (whites)
Course Rating / Slope: 66.5 / 111
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 85

Steady round of 85, with all 4s, 5s or 6s.

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

193. Maybole. 29 Apr 23.

October 22, 2026 /

Maybole: a town that has never agreed on anything, including whether it needs a golf course.

Price Paid: £4 (winter rate, paid at the swimming pool over the road)
Current Price (2026): £8 GolfNow; £24 list (Golf South Ayrshire)
Value: 3/5 at £4 paid | 2.5/5 at £8 GolfNow | 1/5 at £24 list
Moly’s Score: 40 gross, 34 net, 17 Stableford points (9 holes)

Getting a consensus in Maybole has never been easy. Start with the name. A charter of 1192 calls the place Maybothel, which some read as Old English for a maiden’s house. Others prefer Gaelic: a plain with a cattle fold on it. The old folk called it Minnybole, which points to a moor instead. When the Ordnance Survey arrived in the 1850s, its surveyors dutifully listed the rival theories and dismissed one as purely fanciful. Nobody has settled it since.

Then there is the town’s most famous argument. In 1562 John Knox came to Carrick and was challenged by Quintin Kennedy, Abbot of Crossraguel, to debate the Mass. They met in the Provost’s house with forty witnesses apiece and argued for three days. Neither man won. The 1860 Encyclopaedia Britannica records that both claimed victory. That is Maybole in a sentence.

Which brings me to golf, and an argument the town has been having for a decade: does Maybole need a golf course?

The club was founded in 1905 on a course off the Dailly Road. It later moved into the Memorial Park, land the town bought to remember its Great War dead. In 1935 a storm lifted the pavilion off its foundations and smashed it. Visitors then paid sixpence a round and couldn’t play on Sundays. Closure threats came in 2016, 2018 and 2020. In February 2023 the club finally folded for “lack of support”, and the golf press mourned a 118-year-old institution.

I went looking to debunk the 118 years, and I couldn’t. Golf’s Missing Links headlines the club as 1905–2023, then says in its own text that it ceased to exist in 1923. Even the archive can’t reach a consensus. But its Golfer’s Handbook entries run unbroken from the 1930s to the 2000s, so 1923 is plainly a slip for 2023. The club’s age stands. The course is younger.

Fourteen months later, Carrick Speakers Golf Club folded too, after 35 years. That made two clubs gone from one nine-holer. The course carries on regardless as one of eight run by Golf South Ayrshire, and the local councillor insists there is no threat to it. A community company now wants the pavilion as a meeting space and e-bike store. That may be the future of the Scottish town course: still there, but no longer anybody’s club.

The Maybole Golf Club pavilion, shuttered since the club folded in February 2023. Green fees are now paid at the swimming pool across the road, and a community group has applied to turn the building into a meeting space and e-bike store.

I arrived ten weeks after the club folded, paid my £4 at the pool, and played alone. The course repays the effort. It is hilly and constantly undulating, with small greens. The par 3s are the real examination: the 3rd and 6th measure 198 and 219 yards off the yellows, a long way to a small target, and both cost me a shot. Footgolf shares the fairways, and dog walkers share everything else.

The tee markers deserve a paragraph of their own. Each hole has a yellow metal bin, hand-painted with its name and yardages. The 1st is “Railway”. Somebody took real care over these. The dog walkers have found another use for them.

The 1st, “Railway”: hand-painted yardages on a metal tee bin. It doubles as a dog-bag bin, which is about as municipal as golf gets.

The 3rd green looks back over the rooftops of the old Kennedy capital. The 5th climbs steadily to a green beneath the Maybole War Memorial, a reminder of why this park exists at all.

Behind the 3rd green, Maybole’s slate roofs and church fall away down the hill. The green is small and sloping, typical of the course.
The 5th green beneath the Maybole War Memorial. The bunker is neatly raked, its edge less so: honest council maintenance.

The conditioning is honest council standard: well-cut fairways, raked bunkers, and rough edges where the budget runs out. It is better than its South Ayrshire stablemate Dalmilling (Blog 192). I went round in 40 for 17 points, in 65 minutes, which on those greens felt fair.

The 4th Green, showing the dovetailed Foot and Normal golf
From the 9th tee, the view back to the swimming pool, where you pay, and the town beyond. A lone dog walker is on duty.

At £4 this is 3/5 value. Cheap is not the same as good value: there is no club, no clubhouse, and a course that is honest rather than memorable. At £8 on GolfNow it slips to 2.5/5. At the new £24 rack rate it is 1/5, because for that money you’d expect the clubhouse lights to be on.

Whether Maybole needs a golf course is a debate that, like Knox and the abbot, will probably end with both sides claiming victory. For £4, I’m happy to declare mine.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland (hilly town course in the Memorial Park)
Par: 33 for 9 holes (6 par 4s, 3 par 3s); 66 played twice
Distance: 2,420 yards from the yellows (4,840 for 18)
Course Rating/Slope: 64.0 / 109 (yellow, 18 holes)
Course Quality: 2/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 40 (34 net, 17 Stableford points)

Moly’s card, 40 shots took 65 minutes!

192. Dalmilling. 28 Apr 23.

October 20, 2026 /

Dalmilling – please check this course is still open.

Price paid £17.99 (GolfNow), against a £19 rack rate.

Current price (2026): £45 list; £22 GolfNow; £19 GolfNow Hot Deal.

Value 2/5 at £19–£22 via GolfNow; 1/5 at £45 list price.

Dalmilling has a long history of being given up on. Around 1220, Walter fitz Alan, High Steward of Scotland and ancestor of the Stewart kings, brought the Gilbertines (England’s only home-grown monastic order) to found a priory here on the River Ayr. Within a decade they had resigned it “of their own free will”. By about 1240 the last two canons had been told to hand the lands to Paisley Abbey and go home to England. Nothing of the priory survives.

The 1st, encapsulating the fairly bland layout of the least inspiring of South Ayrshire Council’s courses.

The golf course, opened by the council in 1961, has outlasted the monks six times over, no thanks to the landlord, South Ayrshire Council, which has tried to close it at least three times. There was an attempt which ended with a councillor facing 200 angry golfers. In 2017 the council leader wanted houses and an urban park, conceding that the course was good for golfers but not for anyone else. Then in early 2020 it appeared on a list of five of the council’s eight courses earmarked for closure. Each time it survived. The 2018 reprieve came with promises of trees and a perimeter path, and the pandemic golf boom turned the 2020 hit list into an investment Programme. Hence the headline; Before you drive.

The 6th, the best hole on the course: 107 yards, but the burn in its ditch makes it count.

The council has spent money on the clubhouse but not, as far as I could see, on the course. There were no rakes, a Golf South Ayrshire policy already covered in Blog 136. The tees were marked by little plastic cones, and the teeing grounds were scuffed bare. It took me straight back to the Caird Park nine-holer in Dundee, where I started playing: honest municipal golf, maintained to a budget, for people who expect nothing more.

A typical Dalmilling view at the 8th: wide, open and generous, with divots abounding.

At 5,209 yards from the yellows, with five par 3s, it’s short. The one hole with genuine character is the 6th, a 107-yard par 3 over a burn sunk in a steep-sided ditch, with mature trees on either side. Naturally, I made a double-bogey 5 there.

Fran putting on the 12th, with the open layout under a flat grey April sky.

Dalmilling is a good starter course: short, open and forgiving. But it doesn’t need 18 holes. Nine good ones would serve beginners better and cost the council less. I suspect it survives on the season-ticket and green-fee income of Belleisle (Blog 189) and Troon rather than on its own account. At £17.99 it was cheap, but cheap isn’t the same as good value, hence 2/5. The list price has since more than doubled to £45, for a course where I saw no sign of investment. That’s 1/5. GolfNow still sells it for £19–£22, a gap which suggests even the council doesn’t know what it’s really worth. Or perhaps, they’re laying the ground for closure?

Course Type: Parkland
Par 69 yellow tees (2 par 5s, 11 par 4s, 5 par 3s)
Distance: 5,209 yards (yellow tees)
Course Rating / Slope (yellow): 65.7 / 113
Course Quality: 2/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 85 (32 Stableford points)

Moly’s Dalmilling scorecard, poor for such an open course, albeit ground conditions heavy.

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