The 'Other' side of Fife...

[Marty Bonnar]

I've just been recommending some bits'n'bobs to Brent H re a possible trip to our shores.
I remembered a mate of mine was instrumental in sorting out some of our local courses and accoms into a bit of a loose conglomeration of stay and play.

http://www.firstinfifegolf.com/

If you're planning a Fife/East Scotland trip and fancy adding some lesser but still V. nice courses to your golfing c.v.'s, I'd suggest that £75 - for FIVE Rounds - is possibly the most ridiculous bargain this side of the pond!

FBD.

Oh and PS - Both Rihc's and MY Home Courses are amongst these, so figure on getting on them for FREE!!! (At least on mine - Hope I'm not being TOO generous, Mr G.!?)

[Mark_Rowlinson]

There are a number of such initiatives, and jolly good value many of them are - start with the tourist boards.  The other exceedingly good value way to play many of our courses is to play in their open competitions - most start updating their websites about now.  That reminds me, I must update the Web browser's guide which is lamentably out of date.

[ForkaB]

Martin

I call our little part of the world Baja Fife.....

Of course free golf is available chez moi, but it takes some kind of man to be willing to be beat up by a little ole' 5300 yard course.  Most GCAers tend to just stop in to enjoy the eye candy.......

[Brent Hutto]

Rich,

I am plenty man enough to be beaten up by a 5,300 yard course. I'm even confident in my masculinity to lay up on a 450-yard Par 5 by playing it driver, 3-wood, full sand wedge.

[Darren_Kilfara]

C'mon, FBD/Rihc...with all due respect to your respective home courses (and I did enjoy Aberdour as a pleasant diversion, although I won't be rushing back just for the architecture) and the others on this list, I'd have thought an American tourist would need to be somewhere between my 15th and 20th trips to Scotland to even consider taking this offer up. Time is just too precious - and the superior golf courses far too numerous - for diversions along these lines, don't you think?

Cheers,
Darren

[Brian_Ewen]

Rich
Snap !

But mine is 200 yards shorter ! .

Someone in a new Scottish Golf Guide described it as "Only an Executive Course" .

Whatever that is ? .

Brian

[Brian_Ewen]

Sean
Not according to Darren Kilfara  

[Michael Hayes]

I have played Stonehaven, back in 2001 during a three week golf trip with a buddy... i would play there again if I were ever in the area, it was great.  Its no Old Course but i had more fun at stonehaven than at either Leven or Lundin (not that I disliked those two )

I don't know if I would quantify Stonehaven as a must play but i have reccomended it to friends that were going to be in Aberdeen and Crudan Bay for multiple days...

[ForkaB]

C'mon, FBD/Rihc...with all due respect to your respective home courses (and I did enjoy Aberdour as a pleasant diversion, although I won't be rushing back just for the architecture) and the others on this list, I'd have thought an American tourist would need to be somewhere between my 15th and 20th trips to Scotland to even consider taking this offer up. Time is just too precious - and the superior golf courses far too numerous - for diversions along these lines, don't you think?

Cheers,
Darren

Darrren

Man doth not live on caviar alone.  Nor even on golf alone....

There are a lot of equally good or even better things for golfers to do in Scotland than only play the A-list courses.  I would find it sad if someone came over here 15-20 times and never took the time or effort to seek out and play some of the "smaller" courses, or even take a day off and walk around Edinburgh, or sample the nightlife in Glasgow, or climb a Munro, or visit Skye, or......

Martin's "Fife First" list gives you 5 rounds at any of 8 course for ~$25/round.  And if you are a GCA snob, these include two Stutts (Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy) and a Park Jr. (Burntisland).  And if you want to stretch your budget, you can play an authentic Mackenzie/Bonnar at Pitreavie for about $40.

This all leaves serious money available for drinking and womanizing (or saving it to buy shoes for the children back in the USA....).

[Brent Hutto]

This all leaves serious money available for drinking and womanizing (or saving it to buy shoes for the children back in the USA....).

Or for being able to go home knowing there's a good chance you'll be back in a year rather than five.

[THuckaby2]

Having gone to Scotland a few times on trips with both limited time and funds available, let me say this:

The deal Martin posts is attractive.  Saving money is a good thing, and I have absolutely no doubt those courses would be great fun.

BUT... I can't help but think if one did only that, one would sit at home a few months later, smack himself in the face and say "dammit, I could have played ___________!"  [Fill in that blank with any of the big-name links].

So it's all a matter of how much time is available.  If one is Dan King and has a full summer to tour around, then hell yes, Martin's offer is great.  On the other hand, perhaps Darren does stretch it to say such lesser links would only happen on the 15th-20th short trip over - and Rich is right, one would surely hope that he finds time to do all those other things if he goes over there that often.  But that being said, it is going to take a lot of golfing days before one's time at the truly great links is exhausted.

Perhaps the best is a happy medium?  That is, seek out the great links but always leave a little time for the lesser lights, where one might be able to experience the PEOPLE a bit closer?

That's going to be my take from this point forward.  But then again my next trip - if such ever occurs - would be trip #4 to Scotland.  The big names have already been seen.  I surely couldn't argue with someone going over for the first time who just wants to play the big names.

TH

[Darren_Kilfara]

If someone can show me where Stonehaven appears on the map of Fife, I'd be mightily impressed! (I'm guessing that Stonehaven has much more to recommend it, at least as a tourist attraction if not a golf course as such, than do the courses actually part of the Fife offer.)

Tom and Rich, your points are certainly correct, but I think the "lesser" courses one should aim to play are the likes of Dunbar in East Lothian, Glasgow Gailes in Ayrshire, Montrose in Aberdeenshire, Lundin Links in Fife, Brora in the Highlands, Dunaverty in Argyll, and so on - all of these courses have real architectural interest despite being somewhat off the beaten path. The courses listed in the Fife offer are at least as far below Dunbar/Montrose/Brora (etc.) as Dunbar/Montrose/Brora are below the A-list courses in terms of quality, aren't they? That's the real point I'm trying to make...

Cheers,
Darren

[THuckaby2]

Darren:

Very good point - I hadn't drilled down into the details on this.  But yes, there are even so many great "B" courses that if the ones on Martin's list are "C"s, then yes it does just make sense to exhaust the Bs first.  

Of course the points on the other side are:

1. IN GENERAL, the lesser the light, the more likely one is to get a warm welcome and/or get to play with a local.  Of course that goes especially for the home courses of Rich and Martin.    And there is something to be said for this, for sure.  The one tiny regret I have about my trips to Scotland is that I haven't done enough of that, in general being with good friends as it was.  But it is a small regret easily dismissed when I think back on all the fun I did have.  

2.  These "C" courses are going to be SO much less expensive, well.. if Fife on a Budget is the goal, then it might be C only.  Even the Bs might be too expensive.  In any case the As surely are, sadly.

TH

[Darren_Kilfara]

But here's the point: who flies all the way across the Atlantic to play "C" golf courses? If you live here already, that's one thing - I've played (and really enjoyed, often in tournament play) a number of Scottish golf courses I would never in a million years recommend to American tourists. If you're going to spend the money to get here, you really should spend a little bit more to at least experience "B" courses - at most of which you should, I think, be able to find Scottish playing partner(s) if that is your ultimate goal.

Cheers,
Darren

(Brian/Sean - just in case my previous post was a bit obtuse, Stonehaven is near Aberdeenshire, i.e. nowhere near Fife and nothing to do with the offer FBD first cited. I don't know how that got involved in the discussion...)

[THuckaby2]

Darren:

Absolutely, well said.

I was just trying to describe what one might do if Fife on a Budget was MANDATORY.  That is, he only had so few funds available.  In that case, there still would be some positives.

Of course that then begs the question of why go at all, with such limited funds?

A friend of ours is debating this very thing.  If one has the jones to go, well it's hard to tell him to wait.  And if the die is cast, well... is it not a good thing to focus on the positives?

 

[ForkaB]

Darren

I (and YOU! ) drove 400+ miles to play Painswick, a "C" course if I ever saw one (Sean Arble would probably go even further into the alphabet, if he still remembers his ABD's..... ).

There is so much more to life than great (or even good) GCA, and if one wants to first sample Scotland by staying in one salubrious place for a week to play some interesting golf rather than making an Ayrshire, Mull of Kintyre, Sutherland, East Lothian, Aberdeenshire, Fife road-trip-from-hell just to have his average course played move a few decimal points up the Doak scale, well good for him!

PS--For all--this is not recommended for everyone, just those who think it might be a good idea.  To each his own.
PPS--Darren, again--I think you missed the point about Brian's comment about Stonehaven.  We were (and are) talking about Fife only metaphorically, not literally.

[THuckaby2]

Any topic that allows for use of the word "salubrious" is a great one by me.  

Hey, this has all been discussed many times before.  In a perfect world, we all have infinite time and money.  The fact is very few of us have umlimited amounts of either of those commodities .  Thus we make our choices, and yes, to each his own. Of course the oft-battled additional issue is what Rich brings up, and that is the worth of staying in one place and really getting to know it versus travelling around and seeing many places.  The plusses and minues on each side are too numerous to list out yet again.  That just comes down to personal preference.

The very bottom line I've come up with on all of this is that there is no WRONG way to experience Scotland.  Whatever you do, a good time will be had.

Of course a slightly better time will be had in Ireland, but that's yet another additional issue.

 

[Brian_Ewen]

I find talking with a lot of golfing Tourists , that they play the Big courses to tick them off a list , and its always the newly discovered "hidden gem" that lingers longer in the memory after returning home .

Darren
No you were not obtuse , it was my fault that the thread diverted away from Fife to Kincardineshire . I was referring to you recommending your book to me because you mentioned Stonehaven in it .

Only to find that you described it as :

""I was annoyed that the course had 7 par3s , no links atmosphere and precious little architectural merit ""

Best Regards.
Brian

[THuckaby2]

Brian:

Yes, the discovered hidden gem might live longer in the memory, because it is unique to the individual and the "welcome" is likely warmer.  That's what I was getting at.

But that being said, no offense but come back home and tell the boys about Painswick and all you're going to get are blank stares.  Tell them about St. Andrews and the looks will be green with envy, and the questions will be numerous.  There is something to be said for that as well.  

 

Another key thing is that missing a hidden gem never leaves one with any regret - how can it? - you don't know about it to begin with.

Missing the big names does indeed invite regret.

Many ways to look at this.

TH

[Doug Wright]

I was surfing around DEEP in the GCA archives (circa 1999   ) for something else and came across this info on Stonehaven from John Vander B:  

"5103 yards par 66.  SSS 65 (course rating).  Designed by George Duncan, the 1920 British Open champion and runner up in 1927.According to the Architects of Golf, he also did the restoration work on Royal Dornoch after WWII, adding 4 new holes to replace 4 lost to the RAF.  According to the book I got at Royal Dornoch, 6 holes were added after WWII at the north end, although they don't say who did it.  If it was 6, it would have to be 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.  If 4 holes, 7, 8, 9 and 10.  6, 8 and 10 are among my favorite holes there so that stands well for Mr. Duncan."

[Marty Bonnar]

If I may. Perspective, Gentlemen, perspective.

Dazza K (decided to give you a rap name for some reason, Darren!) may be entirely correct in all he says, but misses, for me at least, one of the ABSOLUTE UNCHANGEABLE FUNDAMENTALS of why I play Golf.

Simple Fraternity.

Sure, I've wept, smiled, laughed, gasped in admiration, practically peed my pants at great golf course design the world over, but, I can better remember, and probably treasure more, the days I met nice people on the links.

Golf may be a lot of things but, for me at least, it's definitely NOT about 'Course-Bagging'. I prefer to leave pursuits like that to sad Specimen Anglers, Munro-Baggers and Jock-Sniffers.

Yes, by all means, give me Cypress Point - but give me it with some good pals, a couple of cigars and a wee hip flask of Single Malt and it will be all the better an experience for it.

FBD.

[Brian Phillips]

Sure, I've wept, smiled, laughed, gasped in admiration, practically peed my pants at great golf course design the world over, but, I can better remember, and probably treasure more, the days I met nice people on the links.

Golf in Scotland is not just the golf but about being with the 'lads' for a day away from the worries of the world.  

I would rather be with my mates such as FBD, on any crappy course, playing matchplay with a bit banter, piss taking and a beer afterwards before playing on any world class course alone on my own...

Brian

[THuckaby2]

DeeJay Jazzy FBD:

That is a fine sentiment.  But let's put this to the test.  Say you are a Scot coming to our lovely area for one time, maybe never ever to return.  One never knows how life goes.  Then say you are offered ONE SPOT in a group at Cypress Point, with three unknowns.

The alternative is a round at PG Muni with three friends from this site.

What do you do?

These types of considerations go into Scotland planning.  Perhaps not to that degree, but well.....

TH

[Brian Phillips]

Tom,

You are comparing one of the most beautiful and most private courses in the world to the whole of Scotland that is not private and can be played ANYTIME....

Just a bit different...no?

[Brent Hutto]

Sure, I've wept, smiled, laughed, gasped in admiration, practically peed my pants at great golf course design the world over, but, I can better remember, and probably treasure more, the days I met nice people on the links.

[snip]

Yes, by all means, give me Cypress Point - but give me it with some good pals, a couple of cigars and a wee hip flask of Single Malt and it will be all the better an experience for it.

Well, I don't want to take sides in this argument...but I will anyway. Just an hour ago I expressed exactly the same sentiment as the above quote in an E-mail message. The best of both worlds is to see a great piece of architecture with a group of like-minded friends. I'm not at all sure whether the great GCA or the friends is easier to give up.