Play a Future Classic at Dumbarnie Golf Course

The fact that true, authentic links, still comprise less than one per cent of the world’s golf courses, is a statistic that helps clarify how precious a resource today’s 247 remaining links courses are. No wonder then that this earliest style of golf course, and the particular coastal terrain which allows it to be played, has always had a premium placed upon it by many dedicated golfers. For it was upon links courses that the game we recognise today was born.

So when an entirely new links course opens, laid across ancient dune-land just minutes away from St. Andrews, the very ‘home of golf’’, it could be classed as a genuinely historic event.

Welcome then, to the extraordinary Dumbarnie golf course, opened in the spring of 2020, and set on the magnificent coast between the legendary links courses of Lundin and Elie, in the sweep of Largo Bay on the northern shores of the Firth of Forth.

Within this golfing heartland, the Dumbarnie links now occupy 345 acres of the ancient Balcarres Estate, yet unlike its long-established neighbours fashioned by James Braid, Dumbarnie has been modelled by 21st-century experts of course design. The layout here, a classic out-and-back routing, with a total of five holes skirting the beach, is a design by English golf architect Clive Clark, while construction was supervised by David McLay Kidd (lead architect on the nearby Castle Course at St. Andrews).