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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
