Kingsbarns before the end of their season?

No bother. As we stand now, anyone want to take the 4th spot?

1. Jimaroid
2. Patricks148
3. HDID Kenny
4.

To recap, for SGU Scots residents it's £107.50 and we're looking at either the 25th or 26th October. If we fill the 4th spot I can make a booking. Of course, we could proceed as a 3 but the more the merrier!
 
Jimaroid said:
No bother. As we stand now, anyone want to take the 4th spot?

1. Jimaroid
2. Patricks148
3. HDID Kenny
4.

To recap, for SGU Scots residents it's £107.50 and we're looking at either the 25th or 26th October. If we fill the 4th spot I can make a booking. Of course, we could proceed as a 3 but the more the merrier!
Click to expand...



Might have a 4th if we can get the 11am time
 
Sounds good. I'll be giving them a call first thing tomorrow (Monday) morning, I'm pretty confident they'll have times around then.
 
Right, we're booked in as a group of four on 26th October at 11:30.

I'll PM you guys with confirmation and my contact number etc. too.

Looking forward to this. :)
 
Jimaroid said:
No bother. As we stand now, anyone want to take the 4th spot?

1. Jimaroid
2. Patricks148
3. HDID Kenny
4.Dave Horrocks

To recap, for SGU Scots residents it's £107.50 and we're looking at either the 25th or 26th October. If we fill the 4th spot I can make a booking. Of course, we could proceed as a 3 but the more the merrier!
Click to expand...

Right thats the 4 ball confirmed then.
 
Dry but the wind played havoc on the greens, started blowy and steadily strengthened. Enjoyed it and would like to return when conditions are more favourable. Great to meet a couple of folk from here. Good day out all in all but left a little disappointed with the course. I'll explain more in a follow up post when I'm not using my phone to post. :)
 
Hickory_Hacker said:
How was your day out??
Click to expand...

It was as Tough out there today, let's just say the Pro's wouldn't play in that wind (no rain). I was shockingly bad even by my own low standards, even though I was 1 under for the back 9 (after one hole of it anyway) hats of to Jim for organising and for Patrick & Dave for attending at the expense of a 6 hour round trip. Would like to play Kingsbarns again when it's playable although I've got to say I would not pay more than the £80 we payed today......nice but not worth more.
 
Thats us just back in Inversneck, its peeing it down here.

Well Kingsbarns.... windy and made putting at bit of a lottery, Jim Played well and truly deserves the Bandit tag he'd given himself two weeks ago.

The 18th green just about summed up the day for me only one to hit the green, with my ball in the middle of the green went to stick my bag up by the club house, only to see its disappearing off the green at a rate of notts and ended up a goo 10 yards off the left side:(
 
patricks148 said:
Thats us just back in Inversneck, its peeing it down here.

Well Kingsbarns.... windy and made putting at bit of a lottery, Jim Played well and truly deserves the Bandit tag he'd given himself two weeks ago.

The 18th green just about summed up the day for me only one to hit the green, with my ball in the middle of the green went to stick my bag up by the club house, only to see its disappearing off the green at a rate of notts and ended up a goo 10 yards off the left side:(
Click to expand...

Calamero, did you win your game ??
 
Right, got some time on the computer.

Firstly, let me put this in the context of my golfing experience as I'm relatively new to the game and I've not done much golf tourism outside of Fife and Angus. I picked up the game at St Michaels, a small club & course just outside of St Andrews and have gone on to play more of the St Andrews Links in the last year. I've played many but not all of the local courses (good and bad) and I've often had conversations with people in the area who have been around much longer than I and many of those locals will say that Kingsbarns is the best course in Fife. Long story short, I was really looking forward to playing it for the first time as I'd heard so many good things about it.

So my impression is yes, it's a good quality course, and absolutely nothing wrong with presentation and condition. It's occasionally breathtaking in scenery and if you were asked to draw or paint, or otherwise envisage your dream golf course, you'd struggle to do much better than what Kingsbarns looks like in places. It mostly looks fantastic, especially as the low autumn sun occasionally broke through the cloud to amplify the contours of the sculpted fairways and hazards.

But as you play, the question that's hard to avoid is, does it play as good as it looks and as it really worth the premium it commands? And more philosophically is it really a links course? It's a course by the sea, but it's not overtly sandy or duney. I'd say it's a beautiful parkland course that borders the north sea. If you stuck trees where the beach was you could be playing any one of many brilliant park/heath-land courses.

As it was always going to be windy today the concern I had prior to playing was finding too much trouble off the tee and, going OOB and/or finding too many bunkers. I checked the forecast this morning at it was saying a solid 30mph southwesterly wind, gusting to 40 mph. As we tee'd off at 11:30, the forecast was spot on and we were immediately playing in a strong but initially not unplayable wind that was always blowing across the holes rather than for or against. I've certainly played medals in worse winds and you could fairly say that a wind like that is "a true test of links golf" and other such clichés...

But it soon became clear that the greens were going to be a struggle, being difficult to hold on approach and difficult to putt in the conditions. It was simply too windy on the greens. The ball just wouldn't stop and on the times it did stop, it happily started moving again. Any breaking putt was hard to judge as the ball was being blown up and down slopes. We all faired okay but by the 12th-15th stretch the wind had picked up and I think we were all feeling a little dejected. I've never seen trolleys get blown over by the wind as many times as I have today. And looking at the nearest weather observations in Leuchars the wind by this point was blowing 40mph and gusting to 60. Even so, the course still felt playable off tees and fairways, it just descended into farce on the greens.

So the wind wasn't great and it spoiled what could have been a fine day of golf but that's not what disappointed me. The thing that stands out is that it's impossible not to think about the value of the place. Is it really worth £215 a round? Although our fourball ended up costing £80 each you cannot play the course without the fees having some bearing on your take-away assessment at the end of the day. There are some great holes on the course but there are also some distinctly average ones. 10 and 11 stick in my mind not because of what they offered but because of what they lacked, I can't remember much about them, longish par 4s with nothing really going on. Whack, Whack (putt, putt... putt :( ).

To wrap this up. I really enjoyed my day out, it was great to meet Kenny and Patrick and I'm glad I got to play Kingsbarns for a first time. I'm keen to play it again and next time it's likely I'll take more away from the experience if conditions aren't so extreme and to be fair it would be different challenge off the medal tees. But where I'm left disappointed is that I don't feel like I've just played the best course in Fife. I feel like it's a course for the rich seeking a links experience without the links challenge, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not entirely what I expected.
 
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