The youth of today don’t know how good they’ve got it…! Way back, when I started planning golf trips, there was no internet to turn to. Instead, we would rely on a map, a dodgy guidebook and, if you were lucky, word of mouth from someone at your club.
Of course, all of that has changed in the last 20 years and we are blessed with many online resources to turn to and communities to ask. The element of mystery has gone out of most golf trips now and Twitter, or one of the many great travel sites, will guide you on your way.
As a result I barely ever use a printed book when planning a holiday these days. Well, apart from The Confidential Guide. Of course, if Doak et al’s work was available on a website it would be more accessible to a wider audience, but there is something special about thumbing through those great books when it comes to fantastising about the next golf trip.
However, it can sometimes feel like there is a little too much information out there, and the curation can be a little questionable in places, so it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. But one publication that will help you plan a Scottish golf trip is the recently published ‘The Golf Lover’s Guide to Scotland’.
It’s not a massive tome pretending to cover every aspect of Scottish golf. It’s similar in size to a copy of the Reader’s Digest (I realise this may not mean much to the younger generation!) and covers twenty four ‘mainstream’ courses, a couple of unusual gems and five 9 hole courses. You may think that feels a little light for a guide to all that is good in the the Home of Golf but it works very well. The selection is strong - only one course, Dundonald, sits a little weirdly in this list. The rest would grace any golf trip to Scotland.
It would have been very easy for the author to overwhelm by going for quantity over quality but he manages to cover all of the main bases in surprising depth.
There are four sections to each review. First up are the nuts and bolts, covering what you need to know about playing the course - when it’s open, what to wear, how to book, what it costs etc.
The next section, probably the most interesting for me, is a very well-researched section about the history of the club which will give you a sense of the course’s place in the game, before moving on to the course reviews themselves.
The reviews do a good job of calling out the key holes on any course and what type of test you are going to get. The photography is particularly good and really brings the courses to life.
For every course you will also get recommendations for where else to play in the area which is invaluable when it comes to putting a trip together. A map would have been a helpful addition in this respect as I suspect many people won’t know their Brechin from their Buckie. (Not that either of those are covered but you get the point…)
The only other slight quibble I have is that rather than give the green fees for individual courses, there is a rather elaborate colour-coded key which requires quite a lot of flicking back and forth to remember. Not the greatest hardship in the world, but worth a tweak for future editions.
There are few golfers in the world who don’t yearn for a Scottish golf trip one day and this book will most definitely whet your appetite and help you plan that special trip. And for those of us who have already played many of the courses, it definitely provides plenty of inspiration for where to head to next.