Musselburgh Links Top Course You Can Afford to Play
brinkley | March 14, 2010Adam Myers at the SandTrap.Com takes a serious look at 5 courses that previously hosted majors that are affordable to play and puts Musselburgh Links at the top of the list. If your a truly devoted golfer you recognize this course as the first home for the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers who now reside in Muirfield, but more importantly you should recognize this course as the first home of golf.
Musselburgh Links is a fine choice as the top pick. Documentary evidence records golf being played on Musselburgh Old Course in 1672, earlier than any other course. Mary Queen of Scots is believed to have played the course in 1567; its origins, however, are probably in the twelfth or thirteenth century. To those that think only hosting major championships make a course Musselburgh has proudly hosted six British Open Championships between 1874 and 1889. But with only 9 holes the new Murfield couse took on the British Open mantel in 1892 and the Open never returned.
The course is primarily on the infield of the horse race course so expansion was not a consideration. The only other course that I know that incompassed a horse racking track, or should I say did, is Brookline Country Club in the United States where a race course intersected with the first couple of holes when the 1913 open was played there (this is no longer the case).
I haven’t ever played at Musselburgh Links, but I’ve got a standing invitation from John Rigg to play there with hickories. According to him “It would be sacrilege to go there and and play with steels.” Since some of you can’t play a course like St Andrews or Carnoustie without steel and certainly won’t bring both a modern and hickory set to Scotland, Musselburgh Links will rent a set of hickories for a very reasonable price.
As golfers we almost lost Musselburgh more than once over the last few years. In 1982 a group of enthusiasts formed the Old Course Golf Club and in tandem with the local authority, resurrected the course and brought it back to a decent standard. Still developers saw land with different eyes and in 2007 there was talk of destroying the course (well at least modifying beyond recognition) for horse race track improvements. Fortunately, Hands Off Our Links, a local campaign group which included the Old Course Golf Club, fought the development bringing it to the attention of local people and politicians and gaining support locally, nationally and internationally.
With the course safe for the time being the club has devised a worldwide associate membership to raise awareness of Musselburgh’s history and provide funds for future development. Sure the membership comes with a list of privileges, most of which many of us we’ll never use, but this isn’t about a club membership it is about preserving our golfing heritage.
So if you have a £90 that you could donate do as I’ve done and consider becoming an Overseas or an Associate Member to the club. You may not use any of the facilities, but this is one golf course we want to preserve for future generations.
Its is lovely to see an article promoting the Old Links.However there is a major inaccuracy in the article. As past Secretary of Musselburgh Old Course Golf Club I was very much involved in the proposed changes, where I considered that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.
The Club supported the development on the Racecourse which would have brought many improvements to the Old Course ,which like most, has endured many changes over the years.
I would also like to point out that the world-wide associate membership is a membership of the Golf Club, not the Course, which is common grounnd but is run by East Lothian Council, who do their utmost to promote the Old Links.
Lionel Freedman
Chairman of World Hickory Open.
Immediate Past Captain of Craigielaw Golf Club.
Lionel, thanks for the clarification. My perspective comes from the information I received from friends overseas, complemented with articles from the web. Obviously, the main source of the article was slighted to the side of the those against the changes.
Also it is difficult for those of us on this side of the pond to understand that a Golf Club would be a separate entity from a Course. We have very few situations like that in the US.
Binky