Niall,
I had the pleasure of playing Balcomie three weeks ago, and later stopped by the restaurant and found a very interesting series of routing maps in a single frame showing how the course has changed since it was built. From 1907 to 1994, the routing was almost identical to the present course [except for the new section on 5 and 6, and a par 3 removed to compensate]. Before that, there were a couple of different 18 hole layouts. As I recall (but I did not get any photos, regrettably), the first had many of the holes playing in the reverse direction from today and rather than 5 parallel fairways, that section of the course had several much shorter holes and no more than 2 parallel fairways at any point. The second 18-hole routing did something similar, but with the present direction of holes.
This made me wonder whether OTM had much to do with the present course. Would he have redone his course twice within less than a decade?
It would be cool if someone could post an image of this series of maps.
In regards to the original post, Balcomie is the only of the "second tier" Fife courses outside of St. Andrews that I've played. I had a great experience, expecting a nice warm-up for my rounds on tougher courses later in the week, but finding stirring scenery and an incredibly difficult course for one at 5800 yards. When you arrive at the parking lot for the first time, you'll see how much the satellite images fail to capture what's on the ground. I'll be posting a full writeup with several photos sometime this month or next.