Turnberry Ailsa Course Review

A bucket-list golf course if ever there was one, the Ailsa has long been recognised as one of the most magical places to play the game – not just in the UK but in the world. Indeed, there are many elements that make Turnberry’s story special - and its championship layout so highly regarded.

The Ailsa’s tranquillity when the sun is shining with the wind benign makes it a treat for all players who can soak up some of the most stunning views taken in on any golf course in the world. Like all links courses - and especially one that hugs the coastline as Turnberry’s Ailsa does - matters become far harsher in the winter months and the weather bites. But even in such testing conditions, golfers at least know they are tackling one of the game’s purest stretches of linksland and there is nothing quite like it.

Willie Fernie’s original layout has a history dating back to 1901, but its role as a serving station in the First World War and a landing strip for the Royal Air Force in the Second would eventually take its toll.

As a result, Turnberry was reopened in 1951 and the Ailsa – reworked by the legendary Mackenzie Ross - would quickly establish itself as a popular host of elite amateur competitions. Its pedigree as a test for the world’s best players was finally recognised in 1977 when it welcomed the Open Championship for the first time, delivering one of the great spectacles for golf as the game’s two finest players – Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus – staged one of the great battles in what would become known as the ‘Duel in the Sun’.

The Open would return to the Ayrshire links nine years later, when Greg Norman claimed his maiden Major title and the first of two Claret Jugs, before Nick Price won there in 1994 and Stewart Cink in 2009. Sadly, Cink’s win 15 years ago – denying a 59-year-old Tom Watson in a four-hole play-off - is the last time the famous championship has been staged at Turnberry with many high-profile names in the game lamenting its absence. Indeed, with the 50th anniversary of that famous Duel in the Sun coming in 2027, there have been vocal calls for the championship to return.

Always looking to raise the standards and despite already being hailed as one of the game’s most iconic venues, Martin Ebert’s redesign in 2016 was met with further acclaim.

Ebert’s handiwork is recognised on every hole in some way or another. Weighing in at 7,489 yards from its championship tees, the par-71 layout’s most dramatic changes are seen on the majestic stretch of holes from 4-11 that runs almost exclusively along the coast as the waves of the Firth of Clyde lap against the rocks below, with the Isle of Arran and Mull of Kintyre in the distance and the iconic Ailsa Craig some 10 miles off the coast.

Perhaps no hole defines Ebert’s redesign more than the Par-3 9th – once a par 4, it is now a thumping 248-yard par 3 - when played from the back tees – in the shadows of the famous Turnberry Lighthouse - which itself has now been converted into a magnificent halfway house and luxurious two-bedroom suite.

Arguably one of the most famous ‘short’ holes in the world, the ninth remains the standout point of a player’s round – although things are just as dramatic on the par-5 10th, with its elevated tee encouraging players to cut the corner of a right-to-left dogleg as the hole sweeps around the rocky shoreline.

And, in an effort to continually raise the standards of the Ailsa, Ebert will return in late 2024 to sharpen up the course further, with both the par-5 7th and par-4 8th going under the knife. Both holes, currently playing from tee boxes on the shoreline of the Firth of Clyde, jut inland under the shadow of towering duneland. But by mid-2025, Ebert will have rerouted both holes closer to the shore, making one of the world’s finest stretch of golfing terrain even grander - and the Ailsa better than ever.