Dumbarnie Links

My second look at Dumbarnie in six months - see my review from fall 2024 - gave me an opportunity to play the revamped 10th hole, where a burn cutting the fairway has been removed. Any time a course removes a hazard, it's a change I applaud. The modern links is plenty challenging enough without that hazard handing out penalty strokes to a golfer fresh off an overnight flight from America.

Dumbarnie welcomes golfers right by offering a free shot of whiskey near the first tee. The hospitality the next four hours is just as good. Dumbarnie's modern links gives St. Andrews another wonderful option in its arsenal. The greens that had been lost for a season are back to being in wonderful shape. Because it's a modern links, Dumbarnie often gets compared to Kingsbarns. It's not on that level, but it's very good, definitely among the top 25 courses in Scotland.

If you're building a new golf course, there are few tougher neighborhoods in which to do so than Fife, Scotland. Being near St. Andrews and a host of first-rate courses means stiff competition, and while being new has its advantages for a while, staying power is most important.

Dumbarnie Links seems well set up to meld into the deep field of golf in the St. Andrews area. Its main point of differentiation is its scale - it is a big ballpark in a region where many of the old links tend to be intimate, sometimes to a fault in certain golfers' eyes. Its wholly-manufactured dunescape is impressive and imposing, and the holes within are very stimulating, with all manner of rolling contours, pot bunkers and more rugged sandy blowouts. Golfers will surely flock to Dumbarnie as soon as it opens to the public in May 2020, at which time we will see just how well the masses believe it stacks up to the neighbors.