Page 101 - Golf World (February 2020)
P. 101
Travel
‘It conjures the same, special sense of being
given over to golf that you find in St Andrews’
Enticing, exciting and enriching, it’s a quite majestic You are, though, rewarded for your perseverance;
start. ‘The best opening hole in golf’ will always be a this may only be a hamlet, but it somehow conjures
subjective title; but as you leave the green, you cannot the same, special sense of being given over to golf
escape the feeling that of the world’s 40,000 1st that you find in St Andrews, Dornoch or North
holes, you might just have played the best. Berwick. People only come here to play golf.
Indeed, the one road into the village takes you
Enigma variations right past the 18th hole and 1st tee to the clubhouse
Maybe the hardest thing about Machrihanish’s 1st – or rather it would, had the clubhouse not burned
hole is getting to it in the first place. A small and down just before Christmas last year. Mercifully, no
remote collection of dwellings near the one was injured and the club’s plans for rebuilding
south-western tip of the beautiful Kintyre Peninsula, are well under way.
Machrihanish is reached for most via Glasgow Such is the informality at Machrihanish that, if
– either by hopper flight into nearby Campbeltown, the tee times allow, you could be out of your car and
140-mile road trip north past Loch Lomond then off the 1st tee within minutes… and with that
south down the peninsula, or ferry via Ardrossan. opening shot in store, it’s hard not to. But despite
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