John Morrissett's 1999 Kilspindie course profile has been updated with photographs taken by .... my daughter MacKenzie (!). Additionally, golf architect and Kilspindie member Todd Jerome and the ubiquitous Rich Goodale share their thoughts of this uncluttered 5,500 yard East Lothian gem.
Kilspindie entices, jutting into the bay, blessed with wind, sandy soil, and a routing that takes maximum advantage of the shoreline going out and an old wall coming in. Its only deficiency for me is that the ground isn't rumpled like Brora or Machrihanish. So be it but there’s plenty of broad slopes like the right to left tilt on the approach to the 15th and the front to back one at 16. These approaches demand keen judgment, rumples or not.
Some might cite Kilspindie's 5,500 yards as a shortcoming (no pun intended
) but the course is situated on 70 acres, so what would you expect?! I remain in ox-dumb awe of any course built that is completely out of proportion to the talent level of the 99% of those that play the game. No other sport has been so often ill-served by the prevalence of bloated, expensive playing fields that miss the mark for the overwhelming majority of participants.
At age 51 with creaky knees and a shoulder turn that some say isn't
, I am far more interested in courses that measure ~6,000 yards than ~7,000 yards. The best of these still demand a healthy repertoire of shots and the fresh 'breeze' gusting past 30 mphs definitely kept all of us on our toes last month at Kilspindie. Plus, you can finish in 2 to 3 hours, which - tragically - is about the most time many of us can allot to the sport on a given day. Even my non-golfing, 15 year old daughter exclaimed after walking her first ever eighteen holes,
'That wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!' No higher praise can be had from a teenager temporarily separated from her iPhone!
Todd shares these two pics with us from his library:
The all-universe eighth, one of the game's most thrilling (yet unheralded) one shotters.
The view from the one shot tenth sans big dunes along the shore proclaims the water's preeminence which is intensely felt throughout a round at Kilspindie.Kilspindie is another example of the fun golf that helps Scotland attract tens of thousands of players annually. Surprisingly, the Kilspindie model, as wildly popular as it is (35,000 rounds per annum), hasn't rubbed off elsewhere. Tom D. nailed it in Volume 1 when he wrote
'Were there only more such courses where one could play in two and half hours after dinner, the game would be thriving in other lands, too.'Alas, will we ever learn?!
Best,