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 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.
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.
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.
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)
