1. P
hil Mickelson, who won the Scottish Open at
Castle Stuart in 2013 before heading down to
Muirfield to claim the Claret Jug the following
week, went as far as to say that playing Castle
Stuart “should almost be a prerequisite before
you’re allowed to design golf courses nowadays.”
Endorsements can’t carry much more weight than
that. Not only did the likes of Mickelson, Henrik Stenson
and Ernie Els give genuine star quality to that Scottish Open
field, but American broadcaster NBC gave the tournament
live, prime time television coverage in the United States, an
honor unheard of for a regular European Tour event. The
players loved the golf course, the event, its purse and the
Open preparation, the sponsors loved the golf course and
the exposure, and Castle Stuart has not looked back since.
“Our worldwide awareness has certainly taken a
leap forward since the 2013 Scottish Open,” starts Stuart
McColm, who has been general manager of Castle Stuart
Golf Links since shovel hit earth for the first time in 2006,
before the course opened in 2009. “We have seen a 20
percent rise in our international bookings, and that is a big
increase, particularly when the golf market as a whole is
cooling at the moment.”
The game evolved in Scotland
before shipping to the United
States. As Robin Barwick
and Reade Tilley report, the
relationship has now reached
full circle as American dollars
are funding some of the finest
golf developments in Scotland
A Bonnie
Business
The Renaissance Club opened in East Lothian in 2008
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When Castle Stuart Golf Links opened, Golf Digest
called it the “Overseas Destination of the Year,” and “the
first great links of the 21st Century.” Co-designed by two
Americans, managing partner Mark Parsinen and architect
Gil Hanse, the course offers panoramic views over the
Moray Firth to the far-reaching Scottish Highlands beyond,
and picking up on Mickelson’s admiration of the design,
rather than bash club golfers into miserable submission, the
layout features generous fairways and forgiving mounding,
large greens and playing options on every hole.
“We don’t want to beat people up with a golf course
that is difficult just for the sake of being difficult,” adds
McColm. “We have a championship course that can deliver
a challenge at the highest level, but the last thing we wanted
to do with the Scottish Open was show a worldwide
audience that our golf course is so difficult the average
golfer wouldn’t want to visit.”
Castle Stuart is one of the finest examples of American
development of a Scottish golf course paying sustainable
dividends,but it is not the only one.DonaldTrump now owns
a golf resort on each Scottish coastline, Trump International
Golf Links on the east, and Turnberry Resort on the west;
Machrahanish Dunes has been built by American company
Southworth Development on the Kintyre Peninsula, off
Scotland’s west coast; and The Renaissance Club, snugly
fitting between Muirfield and Archerfield Links in East
Lothian, is run and developed by the American Sarvadi
family, with Jerry Sarvadi in house as managing director.
“Both our membership and turnover have grown every
year, literally, since we opened in 2008, despite the fact the
world was in recession,” starts Sarvadi, who negotiated
a 99-year lease for the land from the Duke of Hamilton
estate. “We have over 200 members, but our goals relate to
how many people play the golf course on an annual basis,
and how that affects the presentation and conditioning of
the course. This year we have had around 9,500 rounds of
golf, and while I don’t know how many members we will
eventually have, I do know we would like to cap our annual
rounds of golf at around 20,000.”
Sarvadi collaborated closely with Scottish
conservationists to gain permission to build the course, and
brought in architect Tom Doak with a view to creating a
layout requiring only the minimum movement of earth.
That was all the God-given landscape required anyway. The
result is a course that embraces the natural dunes and defies
its young age. Even the R&A, an organization renowned
for its preference of links courses that have withstood the
test of at least a century’s golf, has paid The Renaissance
Club a compliment of real substance by inviting the club
to co-host the 2016 British Boys Amateur Championship
alongside next-door neighbor and revered [British] Open
venue Muirfield.
In considering new links that hark back to the
19th century by taking the land more or less as it lies,
Machrahanish Dunes might be the epitome. Just down
the road from the legendary Old Tom Morris track at
Machrihanish Old, this 2007 design is as rugged and as
close as Scottish golf gets. It had to be too, in order for
Southworth Development to gain permission to build on a
Site of Specific Scientific Interest.
“We did not lay out the course and make the land
change with it, we designed each hole around the natural
terrain,” says course architect David McLay Kidd. “For
maintenance we do a little mowing, but mostly rely on the
wandering sheep to keep the fescue in check… No longer
is [golf] a gentle walk in a garden, it will be a full-fledged
mountaineering expedition at this course.”
Like The Renaissance Club, Machrahanish Dunes is
a beautiful example of Americans treading lightly in golf’s
ancestral home.
MachrahanishDunesisabeautiful
exampleofAmericanstreading
lightlyingolf’sancestralhome
The distinctive Art Deco clubhouse at Castle Stuart
The 13th hole at Trump International Golf Links (above) and the ocean panorama from Machrahanish Dunes (below)

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Golf participation might be down overall in the
United States, as it is in the UK, but at The Renaissance Club,
where 30-year family membership bonds sell for £75,000
(around $119,000) plus annual fees of $8,000, numbers are
up. Green fees that equate to approximately $286 for peak
season golf at Castle Stuart are being snapped up, too.
It might be forcing the point to suggest there is a
trend for American ownership of Scotland’s new generation
of luxury links, but certainly a precedent was set when
Castle Stuart’s Parsinen opened Kingsbarns, just outside St
Andrews, in July 2000.
“To find the start of this American involvement in
Scotland you have to look at Kingsbarns. Mark Parsinen
was the first one to do it,” acknowledges Sarvadi. “Castle
Stuart and Kingsbarns have the big advantage of having been
on TV by staging tournaments. That has generated a lot of
visitors for those clubs, and that has been a good thing.”
The point is reinforced by Castle Stuart’s McColm,
who was on the team that created Kingsbarns with Parsinen
and architect Kyle Phillips.
“Kingsbarns showed people they could do very well
to invest in Scottish golf, as long as the golf course is of
the highest level,” says McColm. “People will pay to play
the right courses, and Kingsbarns sparked demand for the
modern links golf course. There are lots of great modern
links that have followed since, like Bandon Dunes in
Oregon, Barnbougle Links in Tasmania and Cabot Links in
Nova Scotia.
“Kingsbarns not only set the architectural world on
fire, but it also delivered a new operational model—without
regular memberships—as we are doing at Castle Stuart.
Kingsbarns offers an ideal balance to the balloting process
at the Old Course in nearby St Andrews. Kingsbarns gave
flexibility to golfers, and a lot of people could resonate with
that. Donald Trump has certainly adopted it up at Trump
International in Aberdeen. It means that visiting golfers are
club members for the day, and they are not subordinated in
any way by regular members. They can enjoy a high-class
golfing experience without any compromise.”
When considering Americans and golf in Scotland, the
name “Trump” is never far away. The American billionaire’s
mother, Mary MacLeod, hailed from Stornoway on the
Scottish Isle of Lewis, and Trump had a long-held ambition
to expand his golfing empire in his mother’s homeland.
After what he said was more than five years of searching,
Trump settled on a breathtaking stretch of land along the
Aberdeenshire coast—north from The Renaissance Club in
East Lothian and Kingsbarns in Fife, but south of Castle
Stuart on the fringe of the Scottish Highlands—and Trump
International Golf Links was born.
The club opened to widespread acclaim in July 2012,
but the dirt started flying there long before ground was
broken. For the course’s opponents—which include various
“Tofindthestartofthis
Americaninvolvementyou
havetolookatKingsbarns”
Patrick Drickey / stonehousegolf.com
The 18th hole at Kingsbarns, a course widely considered the first of a new breed of high-class links courses

4. AMERICAN STORY AT SKIBO
Scottish, American, English and then American-owned again, Skibo
Castle, on the shores of the Dornoch Firth, began life as a 13th
century Scottish castle, before being re-built as the cherished retreat
of the famous industrialist, Andrew Carnegie, in the late 19th century.
Carnegie, an American born in Scotland, frequently returned to
the highlands to play golf, among other pursuits. In 1982, English
businessman Peter de Savary purchased the estate and castle,
developed its facilities—including the golf course—before selling to
Texan Ellis Short in 2003.
Today, for the lucky few, the members-only Carnegie Club
offers a sumptuous experience with the comprehensive facilities
including trap and pheasant shooting, fishing, horse riding, cycling,
quad-biking and falconry. The dining and luxurious accommodation
is exemplary, as is the golf, with the course listed among Golf World’s
Top 100 Courses in 2014.
Like every other facility featured in this article, Skibo is a bold
mix of the new and old worlds, and it’s also a supreme example of
America and Scotland’s longstanding golfing relationship—forever
may it play.
locals, politicians and environmentalists—the development
is an overhyped blight on the landscape. There’s still some
politicking going on regarding the full project and an
offshore wind farm that has riled Trump (plans for another
course and hotel there have been parked for the time being).
Trump subsequently turned his attention to Scotland’s
west coast, and it looks like he might finally achieve his
wish of hosting the [British] Open with his acquisition of
the legendary Turnberry Resort this summer, for a reported
$63 million (price according to London’s The Independent).
Turnberry last hosted the Open in 2009, and the R&A is
yet to reveal if or when competition for the Claret Jug will
return to this spectacular Ayrshire venue—which vies with
Muirfield as being the most photogenic Open course—but
that’s another story.
Apart from being new Scottish links courses built
with American investment, Castle Stuart, Kingsbarns, The
Renaissance Club, Trump International and Machrahanish
Dunes all have a golfing experience of the highest caliber at
their core.
“These new courses have added another golfing option
in their particular areas, and they have each put something
special on the table,” says Sarvadi. “Each one has created its
own niche within its locality.”
“If the golf is good enough, golfers will travel in
their various guises,” adds McColm. “Whether it is in
couples, families, groups or corporate outings, the common
denominator between them all is a desire to play top-quality
golf. If the golf is not good enough then owners are going
to struggle. As long as you are in that highest echelon, and
as long as your customer service is also of the highest level,
then golf courses have a good chance to succeed.”
The iconic Ailsa Course at the Turnberry Resort in Ayrshire
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