Other Notable Courses in Scotland

Not even the most avid golfer can hope to play all of Scotland's great courses on one trip. Sadly missing from my recent tour were the King’s and Queen’s courses at Gleneagles. (The Jack Nicklaus PGA Centenary Course at the resort is the site of the 2014 Ryder Cup, but it is a parklands track, not a classic links.) The Tom Weiskopf/Jay Morrish course at Loch Lomond, located just 21 miles north of Glasgow Airport, is also a parklands track, which is highly regarded for its routing and conditioning. To the west, the Kintyre Peninsula offers two superb seaside courses in the village of Machrihanish. Irish Sea One, at The Machrihanish Golf Club, was first laid out as a nine-holer and was expanded to 18 holes by Old Tom Morris in 1879. The remote, windswept course has hardly changed since then. Nearby is Machrihanish Dunes, constructed a decade ago by David McLay Kidd. On the east coast, Carnoustie is a 45-minute drive northeast of St. Andrews. Starkly beautiful and isolated, it is situated on a sliver of land that juts into the North Sea. The course can be horribly difficult, but the layout is undeniably brilliant. Equally good is Kingsbarns, located just a 10-minute drive from St. Andrews. In 2000, Mark Parsinen and Kyle Phillips laid out such a compelling links course here that it is now a fixture in the annual Alfred Dunhill Links Championship (a European Tour version of the popular AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach).