Willie,
Nearly all of the Links courses in Scotland have fescue fairways as well as Poa. This is not to do with the sea or the salt in the air. It is because as Don described it - "you need a temperate climate, sandy, well drained soil, good irrigation water quality or adequate rainfall, and limited traffic (no carts)"
Which is exactly what you have in Scotland!!
The best courses are usually built on what they call poor agricultural land ie. sand. That is one of the other reasons why so many courses were built on sand in the old days in Scotland. It couldn't be used for farming so they played golf on it.
Many of the agronomists from Scotland will argue that the USGA particle curve is nearly a pure copy of the sand on and around Links courses in Scotland!! However if you want to achieve a good perched water table under you green then be careful of the thickness of you rootzone.
The USGA green is 30 cm but if you have good local sand get it checked out and your lab will tell what thickness you should have your green to achieve the perfect perched water table. Kyle Phillips is designing a course on the West of Scotland called Southern Gailes and they are using local sand but have to have a thickness of 650 mm for the greens to stop the water table saturating the top of the green!!
Do you want a perfect course, find a sandy area, a good architect and a not too greedy client and you will be well on your way to a great course.
Too many clients don't have the money to build good courses on inland areas and cut corners in the construction or planning stages. I was constructing a course in Oslo for a client and they decided that they wanted a fancy wall along the lake we had dug out. That was fine so we gave them a price for it. They accepted the price. In the same meeting I wanted to put more drainage in the fairways (this is a clay inland course). I received a straight no, they didn't have that in their budget. I asked them to cut out the wall and put in more drainage instead...no way!! Three months later after seeding was finished they asked us to come back and put drainage in the areas I had asked for not so long ago...it wasn't cheap!!
That is the problem these days. You can create good courses on clay based soil but you need to have a good and realistic budget to achieve it!!
Brian