Machrihanish Dunes golf course played on 16 and 17 September 2020

by Eza/Finn · Published September 24, 2020 · Updated September 25, 2020

If you have read the blog about the Machrihanish Golf Course then here at the Machrihanish Dunes course you just have to add that dunes are a lot more spectacular. Higher and lower and more dramatic.

Machrihanish Dunes is the neighbour to the old Machrihanish, laid out in 1879 by Old Tom Morris.

Now more than 100 years later, renowned present-day golf course architect David McLay Kidd added this second course to the area.

A short introduction to McLay may be in place.

McLay is one of the new stars on the golfing architect firmament. He is responsible for creating the Bandon Dunes in Oregon (US). I know because Bandon Dunes is one of the courses on our list of the fifty courses you need to play before you die. If it hadn’t been for Miss Corona we would have played Bandon Dunes in the middle of August this year.

That was not to be, but now we got a taste of David McLay’s idea of a golf course in accordance with the nature.

**Hole 4, par 4, from the back of the green**

Like with the Bandon Dunes, the area on which the Machrihanish Dunes was to be build, is protected by the Scottish government with all kinds of restriction to secure sustainability of the nature.

One of the consequences was that all the alternation and mowing of soil and sand was done manual by a workforce equipped only with shovels. No bulldozers or scrapers or the like.

The result is that this Dunes course is even more a result of the nature than the neighboring Old Tom Morris course.

The course is – let me put it this way – somewhat more wild than the Machrihanish course. Nothing have been done to make the top of the dunes lower or to raise the level of depressions or to move or smooth half of the side of a dune away to get a clear view to a green.

The nature with small alternations visualized and suggested by McLay have made a great place to play golf.

Please, just take a look at the following pictures.

Note the yellow arrow pointing to a tee that is put into a hole. Divide the green into a number of sections, the green keeper then only have to move the tee to the sector of the green (on the picture), similar to where he made the hole on the green itself.

One of the consequences of letting the nature determine the layout is that you have many long walks from green to tee. It can be illustrated like this. The course from the back tee is 7082 yards long. Measuring your walk in straight lines from tee to green and then the walk on the path from the green to the next tee the total distance is 7 miles. That is actually a walk of 11.265 km. Then the walk up and down the dunes to find your ball is not included.

Usually I find that, this kind of walking distances is hurting the flow of the game. But have to say that in this case it is not so bad. It is a walk in a fantastic nature. So don’t be irritated, just enjoy. Which the following pictures helps you to do. See the sign with the text “REST AND BE THANKFUL”.