Links Courses

A true links course is a golf course located on what is called linksland, and is very rare in the world of golf.

There are perhaps 25,000 or slightly more golf courses in the world. Of this number, fewer than one percent are true linksland courses. Of this one percent, most are located in Great Britain and Ireland. Out of the estimated 150 top-quality links courses in the world, 39 of them are in Ireland.

First, by definition links courses are located next to sea bodies. The terrain may vary from gently rolling to wildly undulating, but is never entirely flat. By virtue of the seaside location, linksland is sandy soil having excellent drainage properties. When covered with turf the porous well-draining sandy soil creates fairways that are extremely firm and fast rolling.

Linksland courses do not necessarily run right up to the edge of the sea. While some do skirt the water's edge, many are sheltered by beachside dunes, or located even further inland. There is an absence of trees on linksland, and seaside winds greatly influence the playing of the game.

The combination of hard and fast rolling fairways and unpredictable winds and weather makes links golf an adventure that varies from day to day. Golf shots of phenomenal distances are possible. For example, during the 2000 British Open Championship with a light wind at his back on Sunday, Tiger Woods drove a golf ball 425 yards on the par-5 fifth hole. Yet when playing into a strong linksland wind, even the strongest professional golfer can have trouble reaching a 400 yard hole in two shots. Remember that a golf ball weighs just over an ounce and a half and is greatly affected by wind.

Look at the photo below of true linksland in Ireland. Here is a collection of words golf writer James W. Finegan uses to evoke a description of linksland:

"... undulating, humpy, hillocky, tousled, cranky, crumpled, rippling, convulations of ground ridges, magical mounds, gullies, hollows, plateaus, dells, swales, rumpled."

As mentioned, The Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland, is the first links course in the world. Its own unique characteristics have to a great extent defined the manmade features that will be found on links courses, and even the few new ones (Ireland has developed more links courses during the past 25 years than any other country) that are being built.

To the right is a photo of a hillside above the famous Loch Lomond in Scotland. Sheep, a couple are seen as small white specks on the hillside in the background, have naturally created the bunker seen in the photo. You can see their path on the lefthand side leading out of the bunker.

A naturally created sheep bunker in remote Scotland.
Photo credit: James Hoskins

James Finegan writes about linksland courses: "All golf courses built since are imitations, however abstract, of these original layouts and the natural features they incorporated --the sand pits where sheep sheltered against the wind, the dunes, and the areas of heather and fescue grass that came to be know as 'rough.' Over tens of thousands of years this linksland evolved as the sea gradually receded, leaving behind sandy wastes which the winds fashioned into dunes, knolls, hollows, and gullies. Gradually, fertilized by the droppings of the gulls, grass began to grow in the hollows. It was thick, close-growing mixture with still, erect blades---the key features of true links turf."