West Kilbride Golf Club

West Kilbride is located in the little seaside resort of Seamill, made famous by Celtic’s European Cup winning team often using it as a base for their training.

The Seamill Hydro is right next to the golf club in fact so you can have a lovely play-and-stay trip, because the town is slightly disjointed from the rest of a trip to Ayrshire – and is one suspects one of the reasons it is not as well known as even Irvine or Kilmarnock Barassie.

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It really ought to be, because this is a proper links of no little appeal.

Laid out by Old Tom Morris, it gets steadily better as the round goes on. That’s not to say the start is poor, just that the holes around the turn and then for the especially linksy back nine along the shore are of a particularly high calibre.

“The back tees here are nearly 600 yards more than the yellows and transform this links from a pleasant round to an extremely stiff challenge – especially when the winds blows,” says Walker Cup legend Peter McEvoy, who grew up further up the coast at Gourrock.

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“It is short but the turf is true Scottish and the smell is of the sea, it is the way golf was meant to be.”

Ayrshire’s most northerly links is 30 minutes north of Troon, it is set hard against the beach with great views towards Arran.

A well-maintained and unassuming links, that relatively modest starts sees plenty left in the tank coming home with holes of a quality of courses much higher in Scotland’s Top 100 list.

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