What will they affix to the golf course to measure your legacy?

Price Paid: £10, honesty box
Current Price (2026): £10 (third-party listings; the club just says “extremely reasonable”)
Value Rating: 4/5 at price paid / 4/5 at current price (not on GolfNow)
Moly’s Score: 44 gross, 16 Stableford points (9 holes)

The 2nd tee on Whita Hill, the fairway tumbling towards the Esk valley. The yellow umbrella is on Fran’s trolley, not over her head. She had no need of shade from that much sky.

Langholm doesn’t take your money. Like many rural nine-hole courses in Scotland, it trusts you to hand it over. A box by the first tee, a slot for your tenner, a pile of scorecards and the code for the toilet.

The club dates from 1892 and sits on the lower slopes of Whita Hill above the town. It is not easy first time round. There are blind tee shots, burns and ditches across the fairways at exactly the wrong (or right?) distance, and greens small enough that “on in regulation” is an achievement. Driving is hard due to narrow and sloping fairways. The only sand on the course guards the 9th. Langholm doesn’t need bunkers; the land does the work.

The 8th: an elevated tee over a gully of scrub to a fairway you can only half see. Regulars know where the ditch is. Visitors find out.

Then there’s the 4th. A par 3 of 156 yards, played down a chute between rhododendrons and a wall of conifers, the flag barely visible. I made a 2 there and felt pleased with myself for about four minutes, until I found the plaque behind the green.

The 4th: a 156-yard shot down a chute of conifers to a small green beside the wood, and the plaque that sits behind it.

On 31 July 2005, in a match against Kirkby Lonsdale, Andrew Porteous holed his tee shot at the 4th. On the second nine he came back to the same tee and did it again. The figure usually quoted for an amateur making two holes in one in a single round is 67 million to one. Doing it twice at the same hole needs a nine-hole course just to be possible. The plaque spells the opponents “Kirby Lonsdale”. I’d like to think nobody had the heart to correct it to “Kirkby”.

Fran putting on the 3rd. The greens are small, true and, in a dry June, quicker than they look.

It struck me what a good legacy that is. Most of us leave a name on an honours board if we’re lucky. Andrew Porteous left a reason for every visitor to stop on the walk from the 4th green to the next tee. And he hasn’t gone anywhere: he was club captain for 2025/26, welcoming visitors on the club’s website. That feels right for a club run on trust and volunteers. My 2 on the 4th will be remembered only by me.

Langholm has a grander claim too. Its first captain, Thomas Moses, was a director of Reid & Taylor, the Langholm cloth makers, and it’s widely repeated that Reid & Taylor makes the cloth for Augusta’s Green Jackets. However, Augusta’s own story points elsewhere: American reporting names Georgia-milled tropical wool, made up by a tailor in Cincinnati. Reid & Taylor may have supplied Augusta at some point, but I couldn’t find the evidence. The plaque on the 4th needs no such help.

The 7th green, the short par 4 the club calls its signature hole, with a ravine short and right and out of bounds behind.

At £10 this is good value: a properly testing nine holes in fine condition, in a setting most clubs would charge at least twice as much for. It stops short of 5/5 because the blind shots punish a first visit and the greens are too small to make every bounce fair. It’s a bit out of the way, but worth the detour if you’re on the A7.

The 9th green and clubhouse, guarded by the only bunkers on the course.

Facts:
Course Type: Parkland
Par: 35 (1 par 5, 6 par 4s, 2 par 3s)
Distance: 2,936 yards, yellow tees
Course Rating / Slope: 34.3 / 126
Course Quality: 3/5
Moly’s Gross Score: 44 (9 holes), 16 Stableford points

Moly’s Langholm Scorecard – 44, including a 2 on the 4th