An Example of the Golf Market Leaving Normal Golfers Behind
Price Paid: £32 (via GolfNow)
Current Price (2026): £125 (summer, May-Sep)
Value: 5/5 at price paid. 2/5 at current list price.
Tucked between the Ayrshire coastal railway line and the mouth of the River Irvine, this course is shadowed by more famous neighbours, giving an occasional opportunity for value.
In 1887 Eglinton Estates leased land for a course to be built between the railway, the river, the village of Bartonholm and the ‘Bogside’ racecourse. The racecourse had opened in 1808 and from 1867 hosted the Scottish Grand National, but money ran out and the last meeting ran in 1965, with the Grand National moving south to Ayr. The 11th hole is called “Grandstand” although no remnants exist.
The golf course is strategic fare. Willie Fernie, professional at Troon, made the first significant alterations after the original 1887 layout, and Harold Hilton surveyed the course in 1912. But much of what’s here now is Braid’s,including four entirely new holes (the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th) carved from land bought from the neighbouring farms and the Eglinton estate.
When we played, the turf was superb given how early in the year, with fast, subtle greens. Not every hole is tight, the 7th, The Cup, is as wide open as Bogside gets, a breather after the squeeze of the holes before it.
The course has some very difficult holes, no more so than ‘Cannon Hill’, the 6th, a worthy stroke index 1.
The railway is often in play and gives the course added edge, out of bounds running the length of several holes. The 4th, The Moor, is the hole people talk about: a pond hard against the tee, out of bounds down the left, and a green backed directly onto the railway boundary, the line’s overhead gantries filling the skyline behind the flag.
It’s not just me rating it; Tron Carter of the No Laying Up podcast built himself a fantasy 18-hole course on episode 1151, one hole per course he’d played, matched by hole number, and Bogside’s 4th made the cut as part of his dream.
Here’s my one real gripe. There’s a fair amount of blind driving and approach work through the round, notably at the 12th, one of Braid’s own new holes, no less and again at the 14th, where the green sits in its own hidden punchbowl. That sits oddly against the man who redesigned the course: Braid wrote in Advanced Golf (1908) that blind holes should be avoided, “and especially a blind shot to the green.”
Now the value case. I paid £32 through GolfNow; today’s rack rate is £90–£125 depending on season, and GolfNow itself is currently listing Bogside at £115 with no Hot Deals running, barely a discount off list price. There’s a folk explanation clubs like to reach for here, that American visitors equate a high green fee with quality, so pricing low would actually cost business. It doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny. A lot of US visitors book through tour operators, buying flights, hotels and golf as a single package, and never see the individual green fee at all; they can’t be pricing courses on a fee they don’t see. What overseas visitors genuinely lack is a reference point: what a comparable course nearby charges, or what this course cost a few years ago. That’s a much simpler explanation for why fees have room to rise unnoticed than any theory about American taste. Whatever the reasoning, Irvine’s tripled its rate since 2023, and the golfer picking up the difference isn’t the tourist it’s golfer like me, deciding whether this round is still worth it. At £32, this was one of the best value rounds I’ve played anywhere in Scotland; Open Final Qualifying pedigree, Braid’s bunkering, a genuinely varied test, for municipal money. At today’s prices — list or GolfNow, that value case collapses; this is a 2/5 course at what it costs now.
It finished well, at least. The 18th runs you out almost to the clubhouse door, and it was worth lingering afterwards in the lovely old building with real history inside; Old Tom Morris attended a professional tournament here in 1919, and his signed photograph still hangs on the wall.
Facts: Course Type — Links/Heathland. Par 71 (yellow tees). Distance — 6,152 yards (Yellow tees).
Moly’s Gross Score, 93 (nett 79).
