The second-best course in East Lothian

[Bill_McBride]

St Andrews is wonderful, but I really think an annual week in East Lothian, based in North Berwick, would be a terrific experience.  

Nobody's mentioned Kilspindie, which I hear is a lot of fun if short.  Thoughts?

[Darren_Kilfara]

Bill, Kilspindie *is* a lot of fun (and has one all-world par 3, the 8th, set right on the water's edge) but it's waaay too short for serious consideration on this list - we're talking 5,480 yards, par 69 short.

Cheers,
Darren

[Dan King]

Rich Goodale writes:
Painswick is more fun that North Berwick and Cruden Bay put together, but nobody would ever call it a "great" golf course.  Comprende, compadres?

I think you and I have very little in common when it comes to judging golf courses.

I'll never understand this obsession with golf having to challenge other golfers to be considered a great golf course. Sure, Cruden Bay or North Berwick is plenty challenging for just about everyone on this group, but there is some concern that Tiger Woods will play the course and shoot 59. Why should I care? I get plenty of challenge at Cruden Bay. I also have lots of fun.

People ask my advice on courses in Scotland. I think the four most important courses to see while in Scotland are North Berwick, Cruden Bay, Dornoch and Machrihanish. Go to those four courses and you'll get a great sense of what is right in Scotland and what went terribly wrong with U.S. golf.

I like having fun. It is high on my list of goals in life. I've never played Painswick but just from what I hear about it, the course would be high on my list of Scottish courses.

I'm betting Tiger Woods would have a ball at Cruden Bay while possibly shooting 59.

Dan King

The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.
 --Irving Berlin

[ForkaB]

Dano

Did I say anything about a course "having to challenge other golfers" to be "great?"  Don't think so.....  Please don't make the assumption that just because someone disagrees with you on one thing means that they agree with everything you dislike.

Slainte

Rich

[Mike Benham]

NB West - for its variety and fairways.

Gullane Uno and Dunbar I rank very similarly.  Both are solid tests of golf but lack truely memorable holes.  Lunch at Dunbar presented me the introduction to Belhaven Best which in itself makes it #1 in my book.

[Dan King]

Rich Goodale writes:
And, yes, North Berwick is great fun, but overrated as a golf course, much like Cruden Bay, and a few others.......

So what is it about Cruden Bay and North Berwick that make then "overrates as a golf course"?

Dan King

He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
 --P.G. Wodehouse

[TEPaul]

I don't know much of anything about the courses or East Lothian---I think Muirfield, N. Berwick and Gullane may be the only courses I've ever played there but my vote goes to Longniddry on its name alone!!  

Where do they come up with some of these course names over there? They're some of the neatest names I've ever heard anywhere.

[ForkaB]

TEP

Longniddry was so named so as to not confuse it with Shortniddry, which is nearby.

Dan "The "King

Cruden Bay has one great stretch of golf which is as good as it gets, 3-7.  The rest of it, however, is all over the place, both figuratively and literally.  I is an OK driving hole, but the second shot is no inspiring.  2 is goofy, but without much charm, and with a boring (if elevated)  green.  8 has its adherents, and is an interesting par 3 1/2, but has the defect of ending up against a hill with nowhere to go.  Some who are into hill-walking may like the climb to the 9th, and the vista once you get up there is in the top 50 of all seaside golf views in Scotland, but the hole you play is a clunker.  Two long slogs over a barley field to a very average green.  10 is so medicore that the club has been trying to change it for years.  An elevated tee to an auld water meadie.  11-13 are OK, but not much more.  Good solid links golf holes, but there are hundreds of these in Scotland.  14 is quirky, but not one of the most distinguished nor most interesting of the many sunken greens in Scottish golf.  15 is crazy, but not unlovable.  At Dunbar, the architect took a similar piece of land and used it as a pleasant path by the sea frrom point A to point B and vice versa.  Here you hit over the side of a hill to an away green with berms at the back to bounce back over hit shots.  I'll give it an 85/100 for its in-your-face quirk.  16 is quirkier, but not as charming.  To me, a blind short hole of 160 or so where the play is to hit it precisely 117 yards onto the top of a hill (any shorter and you stay up on the hill, any longer and you are through the green) is just not fun, much less golf.  "Target golf" at its very worse.  17 and 18 are below average links golf holes.  There are few golf courses in Scotland which would be improved if they swapped their closing holes for these ones.

All that being said, the clubhouse is top-5 material, with a splendid view over the links.  Unfortunately (as I have said before on this forum) much of the best parts of those links consists of the short 9-hole course which sits in the middle of the Championship course.  Cruden Bay sits on land which could have created a great 18-hole course, if they had used all the great stuff which lies in front of you as you sip you Belhaven Best in the clubhouse and not tried to go south of the 8th green.  There is a world class golf course out there somewhere, but the archies didn't find it, and that's the pity........

As for North Berwick, it's only slightly overrated, IMO.  A bit of a mishmash of styles, with too many over-quirky (i.e. 1, 14 and 16) or average (3, the middle bit--8-11?) holes.  I'd put the Redan in both categories........

Fine course, but on a par with Brora, not Littelstone.

Glad to be of service!

Rich

[Tom_Doak]

Darren:

The phrase "conducive to stroke play fairness" should haunt you to your last days.  I'm sure it will condemn you to a lifetime of bad bounces at North Berwick for years to come.

It depends of course on what your definition of "best" course is whether North Berwick or Gullane 1 should prevail.  My heart is in the North Berwick camp though I know others like your friend who spit at the suggestion it is better than Gullane.  Gullane 2 and 3 are excellent in their own right ... much underrated in The Confidential Guide as I have played both recently.

Our course [whenever it gets going] will be called the Renaissance Club at Archerfield, to distinguish it from the other Archerfield development to which it is not related.

The real best property in East Lothian is all that other dunesland Muirfield owns ... in the right hands that might be a better course than the original, if the authorities would allow it to be built!

[Darren_Kilfara]

Tom,

All I'm saying about North Berwick is that I've played it in strokeplay competition, and in that setting the course is much different than it is in a bounce game (where fun should automatically take preference over scoring). And sure, my piddly little open competition isn't a worth a hill of beans, but what about guys who have tried to qualify for the Open there? We mock the PGA Tour because its courses routinely degenerate the game into a putting contest...isn't it hypocritical to not also mock a course like North Berwick where the last six holes can give the term "bounce game" a completely different meaning? I mean, I love the 16th green to bits, but is it fair to someone who has to make a score on it?

Anyway, thanks for clueing me in on your development at Archerfield - I'd have thought it must be a triumph to design a course in East Lothian and have your company's name on it! Keep me posted, will you?

By the way, to the poster (Sean) who suggested that all of the courses in East Lothian have something worth seeing...you may have a point, but to put it like that, you could probably say the same thing about pretty much every golfing region in the world. Certainly, from what I've seen and played of Whitekirk, Castle Park, Craigielaw, The Glen and Musselburgh (not the ancient links or the Royal course, which I haven't seen, but the pretty ordinary parkland course straddling the rail line), there are duff courses aplenty as well. I'd give special notice, by the way, to Dunbar Winterfield - a true jekyll-and-hyde course with a bold opening par 3 by the seaside over a huge gully, eight utterly flat and uninteresting holes (1 on the Doak Scale) to complete the front nine, then some very interesting terrain which sweeps down to the sea on the next five or six holes (including another very good par 3 down by the beach - I think it's the 13th or 14th), and then a mundane stretch to finish. Worth it at the price for the opener and the back nine, although you might be best off trying to skip to the 10th tee for starters...

Cheers,
Darren