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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
In fairness, the bunkering is excellent throughout, and the island bunker at the 12th is genuinely handsome.
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.
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)
