Western Gailes

If you start with quite the best stretch of links land in the area and mould it over 125 years, then it is very difficult to go wrong, and Western Gailes haven’t.  It lies right on the beach; two parallel strips of fairway not traditionally out and back more half and half on each nine so you don’t face a remorseless bash into the wind on the way out or back.  It is a course of bowls and banks sitting right on the edge of the weather! And knowing all this, a traditional club understands that a proper lunch is fundamental to the whole. Yeoman servings are provided in a roomy clubhouse housing panelled lockers and spacious entertaining areas. This is a club for the ages.

So four holes stretch out north inland but parallel to the sea, then 9 travel right along the beach tops and then five back home with the clubhouse sitting proud of the proceedings; Not overbearing but with a distant, discrete, eye on the first tee and the last green. The predatory voyeur members of the Berkshire would be disappointed. The first four holes acquaint you with the links vernacular; subtle switches in direction; small bunkers with large catchment areas; all velvet gloves from the tee and iron fist penalties; gorgeous capacious greens with capricious slopes. This has to be up there as one of the signature links courses. It even evokes, on the 6th and 7th, the West Coast of Ireland with its sunken greens amidst a sea of wind tossed dunes. Stunning stuff.

Only two par fives on the card but rather more in practical terms as the wind picks up.  The yardage is irrelevant on the par 3s of which there are only three. The first into a bowl of candy-floss grasses and bunkers, the second gentle looking but populated by sirens of the burn and the last a wind whipped up turned saucer that sits with innocent menace on a flat landscape which gives no clue as to actual length

I played Glasgow Gailes, Western’s northerly neighbour, a few years back which was flatter, and rather more brutal though I am told that it has been trimmed a little to give it more definition and playability. In my view this is the superior course.  And there are not many ahead of it.  There are burns and railways to gauge the crosswinds and a modest number of blind shots which help to make this a truly representative links course.  The turf and greens are excellent the place wild and kempt in good part.

This course is fluent in the language of the links.  Go now