King’s Course at Gleneagles reopens

One of Scotland’s most iconic golf courses, The King’s Course at Gleneagles, has been officially reopened after an extensive development programme to restore the course to its original glory.

Scotland football manager, Gordon Strachan, and Scottish golfer Stephen Gallacher – who played his first tournament on The King’s Course at the Bell’s Scottish Open in 1993 – teed off on the first hole of the course to mark the re-opening.

The James Braid-designed course will celebrate its 100^th birthday in 2019 and is widely regarded as a masterpiece in course design.

The course hosted the very first match between British and American professionals in 1921, in an event that was the precursor to what became The Ryder Cup.

Scott Fenwick, Gleneagles’ Golf Courses and Estate Manager, who managed The King’s Course project, said: “We’ve taken the course back to how it would have been in Braid’s day.  I started here in 1980 but by the end of that decade we had begun to change the whole character of The King’s Course to meet golfers’ expectations at that time.

“We started contouring and reshaping until the fairways became really narrow.  The original bunkers within the fairways ended up sitting in the rough, which meant the approaches became so tight that golfers had to fly the ball onto the greens. There was a surge in demand for this type of play at the time.”

The roughs have been thinned out while the fairways are now being cut in the traditional ‘block’ style to imitate the cut that would have been achieved with horse-drawn gang mowers.

Gary Silcock, Gleneagles Director of Golf said: “Taken together, our three championship courses offer a fascinating insight into the development of golf course design.  By restoring The King’s back to Braid’s original design, we’re providing golfers with a lot more choice.

“The PGA Centenary is a modern course with pristine, defined and immaculate contouring where you can really fly the ball and take an aerial approach onto the green. The King’s and The Queen’s, on the other hand, are traditional heathland courses which play like ‘inland links’, where you can pitch, bump, run and manufacture shots, using the contours of the land to get the ball in the hole.”

He added: “This more traditional course tests different skills, including golfers’ green-reading abilities, so it offers a completely different playing experience.”

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Click here or on the image below to read more about the Association of James Braid Golf Courses