Royal Aberdeen Balgownie

The verdict

Royal Aberdeen is a course that carries its history lightly. Founded in 1780, it is the sixth oldest golf club in the world, and the club is credited with introducing the five minute rule for searching for a lost ball, a small civilizing influence on the game that still governs play today. The golf, though, is anything but quaint. The Balgownie Links runs north from the Bridge of Don through a band of huge dunes, and the outward nine in particular is one of the most celebrated stretches of links golf in Scotland, a sequence that has drawn praise from the best players in the world.

For the traveling golfer this is the anchor of a northeast trip and a course that belongs on any serious Scottish itinerary. It has hosted the Walker Cup, the Senior Open and major amateur championships, and it sits within a few minutes of Murcar Links and a short drive from a cluster of fine Aberdeenshire courses. The experience is pure, demanding links golf, exposed to the North Sea wind and routed over genuinely dramatic ground, and it rewards the player who can keep the ball low and accept that the back nine, played over more open terrain, can be every bit as searching as the famous front.

The holes worth the trip

The glory of Balgownie is the front nine. From the early holes the course threads a corridor between two ranges of tall dunes, the fairways tumbling along the valley floor with the sea hidden just beyond the marram grass on the right. It is classic links theater, intimate and protected from view yet utterly exposed to the wind, and hole after hole gives you the sense of golf in its natural element. The bunkering, much of it the work of James Braid, is severe and beautifully placed, and the small, firm greens demand a controlled approach rather than a high target shot.

The closing stretch of the outward nine is where the course makes its reputation, a run of holes that turn with the dunes and finish at a green set hard against the shore. Then comes the turn, and Balgownie shows its second face: the inward nine climbs to higher, more open ground and heads back toward the clubhouse, often into the prevailing wind. There is less drama in the land here but no less challenge, with longer par 4s, exposed tee shots and greens that repel anything but a well struck approach. It is a course that asks for two complete halves of golf.

What stays with you is the quality of the test and the purity of the setting. Balgownie hides nothing and asks for honest ball striking from the first tee to the last, a course where the wind is the real architect and a low, running game is rewarded. To play the famous front nine in a stiff breeze, then grind home over the higher links, is to experience northeast Scottish golf at its uncompromising best.

Where to stay nearby

Aberdeen offers a full range of city hotels within a few minutes of the first tee, which makes Royal Aberdeen one of the easiest championship links in Scotland to reach, with the airport just down the road. For a quieter base, the Aberdeenshire coast and countryside have characterful hotels and inns, and the city's restaurants and bars give you plenty of choice for the evening after a hard day in the wind.

Most golfers play Balgownie at the heart of a northeast run. It sits right beside Murcar Links, an outstanding companion course over the same dunescape, and the trip extends naturally to the Highland links to the north, from Cruden Bay up the coast to the legendary Nairn and beyond, for one of the great links journeys in the game.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels and resorts around Aberdeenshire.