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.