Western Gailes Golf Club

Western Gailes is perhaps the least-known grand old Scottish links. It’s located north of Royal Troon, just off the Firth of Clyde, squeezed on the east by active railroad tracks (like Troon), and thus its north-south routing over and between rolling sand dunes seems far tighter than its neighbors. Holes one through four, all par 4s, head north, then five through 13 march due south along the beach, with fairways mostly aimed southeast or southwest. The closing five play due north and sport some of the most intense bunkering on the 18. The club insists Fred Morris, its first greenkeeper laid out the course, but we say Willie Fernie, who expanded Troon to 18 holes in the 1880s, did it.