![]() However, if you push one to the right you will almost certainly be in someone’s garden - goodness knows how many free balls the owners collect every year?! The hole is almost 400 yards long and to get on in two you need to hit a driver from the tee. With the wind into you, as I had, there is no option of an iron off the tee. While there are some similarities for sure, this is a much harder hole. I had heard the 18th described as similar to the last at North Berwick or the Old Course, with hard out of bounds on the right hand side. This hole has been voted the second best finishing hole in Scotland (I guess The Old Course had to get first place) and, when you play it, is is easy to see why. The only par 5 on the course, it is reachable with the prevailing wind but, with the wind into me, it took a lucky bounce off the back with my approach to yield a birdie.Īnd then to the pièce de résistance of Lossie - the 18th. The 17th tee is perched between the sea and the landing lights for the RAF base next door and you need all your concentration to hit the fairway here. The names of the holes are enough to whet the appetite - Sea, Short, Road, Long, Home. While that feels a little bit of a shame, it is worth waiting for as the finish is one of the very best in Scottish golf. This is opposite to the usual prevailing wind and as a result the closing holes really asked some questions.įor a course so near to the coast you actually only get close to the water on the last few holes. I played the front 9 with a two club wind behind before turning into it for the back 9. The greens were running brilliantly well too and this was a real links experience all round. This part of the country quite famously sits in a micro-climate which means the course often plays like this all year around. Balls landing on fairways took many twists and turns on the crumpled terrain and you could run the ball up at pretty much every green. I played in July and, while there had been some rain in the previous weeks, the fairways were still running tremendously well - the ball was running and running when it hit the yellow turf. The condition of the course was fantastic. This is a really special hole with a fantastic green, well protected with mounds and bunkers.Īcross the road the holes are still perfectly pleasant but probably lack a little of the nuance of those closer to the coast. ![]() The fourth hole is a testing par 3 hard up against a road on the right hand side, which helps focus the mind. The course is a relatively traditional out and back course, with a few twists and turns on the way. However, choose the back tees and it will stretch to a 6,671 par 71 which would be a much sterner test. These range from the 463 brute that is the second to the 252 yard tenth. The course has three par 3s, one par 5 and a good variety of par 4s. I played it from the yellow tees and that comes in as a par 70, just over 6,200 yards in length. While it’s not a long course, it’s no pushover either. The effect is one of the most ‘natural’ feeling links courses you will play. Old Tom simply found the best spots for tee boxes and greens and mowed between them. The course was laid out by Old Tom Morris and he did a great job. You will be rewarded with a true links golf course. However if you are driving from Aberdeen to Inverness then it is pretty much en route and it makes a lot of sense to stop off here. The main reason for that is geography - Lossiemouth is pretty isolated. Rather, as a visitor, you are likely to be an exception on the tee sheet. It is a golf club very much at the heart of the local community - this is no Kingsbarns or Castle Stuart, where foreign voices are the norm. Moray Old Course, known by many as ‘Lossie’, is set in the northern Scottish town of Lossiemouth. St Andrews, North Berwick, Lahinch - to name but 3 - are all great examples. I always think there’s something special about a links golf course that starts and finishes in a town.
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