With
much of Scotland’s
linksland already occupied by some of the greatest venues in golf, few new
seaside courses have appeared on the game’s home turf since the early 20th
century. That drought was broken in 2000 when the acclaimed Kingsbarns opened on
the Fife coast, near St.
Andrews.
Then,
with natives still abuzz over the eye-popping Kyle Phillips design, a links
course was announced for a classic site in Ayrshire, just a stone’s throw from
Royal Troon on the country’s west coast. Phillips, the American whiz kid, got
the assignment for Southern Gailes, to complement a pair of established venues
in the region, Western Gailes and Glasgow
Gailes.
In
early 2003, before work was completed on Southern
Gailes, the developer sold it to Loch Lomond Golf Club. Rechristened
as Dundonald, the project moved from the realm of open public links to that of
exclusive private property, a notion that is anathema to many Scots in a land
where golf is still considered a basic human right.
Public-or-private
controversy aside, Dundonald is a fascinating site. The name—literally
“Fort
Donald”—derives from
fortifications discovered on a nearby hillside dating as far back as 500 B.C. In
1911 the first attempt was made at building a golf course. When a club was
formed, it was named Dundonald, and the members had the original course
stretched to 6,700 yards, a monster by the standards of the time.
That
original course was lost just before World War II; the Dundonald Army Camp was
built on the land after the British requisitioned it for military use. When
Phillips was hired to bring golf back to the site, comparisons with Kingsbarns
were inevitable. But the land he was given to work with at Dundonald is markedly
different from the Fife site: The Dundonald
terrain is much flatter and subtler in its movement, whereas massive amounts of
dirt had to be moved to create the dramatic Kingsbarns. The overall effect is
much more in tune with an older-style links than the modern interpretation that
works so well at Kingsbarns.
Phillips
was keen to retain that traditional feel after initially walking the site in
1999. “The ground was all ancient beach sand,” he says. “There were a few small
dunes, some rushes and gorse areas running through it. I tried to utilize the
strongest and most interesting of the natural features and then create grander,
more dramatic landforms and features over the remainder of the
site.
Stretching
an uncompromising 7,300 yards, Dundonald clearly has the depth of character to
test the best. When the wind blows, par 72 seems as far from reach as the Isle
of Arran, which rises from the sea to the west and dominates the wonderful view
from Dundonald’s fairways across the Firth of Clyde toward Northern
Ireland.
The
Phillips philosophy that demands a variety of decisions from tee to green is
very much in evidence here. As with Kingsbarns, there are a considerable number
of tightly mown areas around the greens, allowing errant shots to run away from
the target and putting a premium on skillful recovery
work.
The
designer’s affinity for links golf is clearly reflected in the large, rolling
greens and often punitive bunkering, some of it reminiscent of St. Andrews itself.
Two
holes are particularly noteworthy. The par-4 16th typically plays with the
prevailing wind but has a hog’s-back hump to add an element of chance to any
drive that carries the first fairway bunker. In the right conditions, the long
par-5 3rd can be reachable in two, but only with a perfect drive threaded
between the ditch on the right side and a bunker that threatens the
left.
Like
Loch Lomond, Dundonald is generally restricted
to members and guests, but a few visitor times are set aside each day after 2
p.m.
