The Joy that is Machrihanish

9th hole looking back to the tee

I had to ask myself why it had taken so long to make my initial visit to Machrihanish. It’s true that it is a bit of a journey, but no more so than Dornoch, which I have visited multiple times. Maybe I had placed too much emphasis on the opinion of Tom Simpson, an architect I admire, who was dismissive of the architectural capabilities of Old Tom Morris. Regardless of the possible reasons, I’m grateful that I finally made the trip.

Seeing and playing the course for the first time was quite the revelation. When it comes to routing a course on links land, Old Tom was a genius. One must take into account how the game was played in the late 19th century, with rudimentary balls and clubs. Even so, he was masterful at finding the most interesting way to play out and back in the links and to locate fantastic green sites. He also recognized how the game and equipment was changing and allowed for his courses to be lengthened in the future while maintaining the original design intent.

What Machrihanish drove home to me was the sense of joy built in to the design. Thinking about other Old Tom layouts, such as Westward Ho!, Dornoch, Muirfield, and Cruden Bay, he desired for the player to experience the lay of the land as presented, while injecting surprise and pure enjoyment in the routing. Of course, in his time construction methods were largely limited to hand labor, and blind approaches were greatly admired. Nonetheless, his ability to identify interesting routings and green sites should not be discounted. By now, all of his courses have been modified, lenghened and often significantly changed, but those that still maintain the bones of his original intent remain works of art.