Gailes Links

Ayrshire is blessed with numerous stellar links golf courses, and Gailes Links is up there with the best of them.

Glasgow Gailes is now more often referred to as just Gailes Links and is yet another stellar links in Ayrshire – and which has improved significantly in the 2010s.

The Glasgow part of the name comes from it being part of a two-course club whose other layout is a parkland within Scotland’s second city at Killermont.

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This is the prized possession of the two, an Old Tom Morris and Willie Park collaboration that has hosted the Home Internationals, co-hosted the Amateur Championship and from 2014 began a four-year stint as Scotland’s Final Qualifying course for The Open.

Located between Western Gailes and the town of Irvine, it is another links over a century old that is from a now-obsolete relic in championship terms.

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Close to 7,000 yards to a par of 71, its gorse, heather and railway-line framed fairways are only ever burnt up by a spell of warm, dry weather.

The Gailes examination begins with a succession of par 4s before a terrific par 5 dog-leg edged by out of bounds that concludes on a well-guarded green and is followed by a short hole and then returns to classic two-shotters.

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The forward tees make it playable for all though, and few discerning links lovers will not cherish the undulating fairways and the subtle test around the pure fescue greens.