Warm season grass Links style courses...stand up and be counted!

[Jud_T]

I'm willing to throw in with Sean in using a strict definition here.  Kingsley is the exception that proves this rule.  The course has cool season grasses, is built on a ridiculous amount of sand and has perhaps the best "links-like" turf on this side of the pond.  But it's not on the sea and doesn't have everpresent wind.  While I value F&F as much or more than the next guy, I would never refer to it as a links.

[Richard Choi]

Tom, it is not like Chambers was a granite quarry!

Chambers used to be a sand and gravel quarry. In fact many of the greens in local area were built using sand from Chambers. As Greg noted, if the land shaped by man is a disqualified, there are many courses that should not be identified as links starting with Kungsbarns.

[Richard Choi]

Going off a tangent a bit...

I think we all can contribute a great deal to the golfing community in general if we can champion the use of "dunes" to describe inland/warm grass link style courses. There are way too many false "links" course out there. I would think expanding the vocabulary will help lessen the confusion.

[Sean Leary]

Sagebrush plays more like a links than any course I have played outside of Bandon and that includes Chambers Bay....

[Garland Bayley]

Sagebrush plays more like a links than any course I have played outside of Bandon and that includes Chambers Bay....

Not when it rains.

[Sean Leary]

Sagebrush plays more like a links than any course I have played outside of Bandon and that includes Chambers Bay....

Not when it rains.

Doesn't rain when I go.  Must be you.

[Garland Bayley]

Sagebrush plays more like a links than any course I have played outside of Bandon and that includes Chambers Bay....

Not when it rains.

Doesn't rain when I go.  Must be you.

I've been there four days. Only one had no rain. Go figure.

[Niall C]

The site near Elie on which a new course has been proposed is called the Dumbarnie Links, though it has never yet been home to a golf course. So the term 'links' refers to the land, and a 'links course' is simply a golf course laid out over linksland.

That's what I'd have said however recently found newspaper reports from 1830's and 1840's that clubs known as the Hercules Club and the East of Fife Gymnastic Club (I kid you not) played golf across the links. Not sure when they stopped playing golf there.

Niall

[Jon Wiggett]

Niall,


could not have been that they played across a simple format of a course with no formal maintenance just sticks in the ground? After all the main reason why golf was originally played on poor grazing ground and mainly in the winter was because this was the only time when grazing kept the vegetation down enough to make it possible.


Jon

[Niall C]

Jon

For sure, it was a less formal game in that sense and I bet that applied to an extent to TOC, Musselburgh and NB at that time as well. But the newspaper reports refer to the landowner granting permission to erect a clubhouse on the links and he was also the captain/president (can't recall which) so there was a degree of formality to it.

It was however about this time (1832) when golf resumed at Elie and I suspect that in due course Elie held sway and the Dumbarnie links became disused over time. The Hercules Club seemed to be a gentlemens club with many members from HCEG and such like. Without a local base you can imagine how that probably petered out over time.

It was just something I found in passing and haven't followed up with any research.

Niall