David McLay Kidd has a deep affinity for this hallowed ground. As a youth, he spent summers playing on the adjacent Machrihanish Golf Club course and fishing in the waters that run through the course. He knows this land, and his empathy with it is reflected in his design of a new and classic 18-hole links golf course capable of hosting championship golf at the highest level and inspiring any golfer, from the humblest beginner to the best players in the world.

My earliest childhood memories were of running on the broad sandy beach and hiding in the steep dunes at Machrihanish. As I grew, I caddied for my father or grandfather across ‘Old Tom’s’ original masterpiece or fished the river through the course for Salmon. I am about to embark on a personal dream to create a second course on Machrihanish Bay, a dream I have mused over my entire career. The genesis of golf came from such landscapes, we will be doing almost nothing to these precious and fragile dunes, right now you can all but putt out. To historians of the game Machrihanish Dunes may give us an insight into how golf look and felt to my Scottish forebears centuries ago as our intention is to create a course as ‘Old Tom’ would have done in centuries past.

David McLay Kidd’s reputation as a master links craftsman comes from his very first creation after the launch of his company, DMK Golf Design, in 1999. His design at Bandon Dunes in Oregon was immediately hailed a masterpiece and he has since received international acclaim for many other designs, including his layout of The Castle Course at St. Andrews. Machrihanish Dunes is a course that mirrors David McLay Kidd’s love of the land and his ability to exact the fullest reward from its potential.