Ailsa course at Turnberry: Closer to the edge

Donald Trump bought Turnberry just five years after Stewart Cink crushed a 59-year-old Tom Watson’s dream of a sixth Open championship. There have been sixteen Opens since, and the Ailsa course continues to wait for its fifth major.

It would be difficult to argue that the layout has not significantly improved in that time, under the hand of golf course architect Martin Ebert, working alongside the resort’s director of golf courses and estates Allan Patterson. In 2016, a major project saw a raft of changes including the rebuilding of all greens, the introduction of new par-three sixth, ninth and eleventh holes, and the extension of the tenth to a par five.

“When we were appointed to advise him, we never thought that we’d be dealing with Mr Trump himself, but he was the man on the buggy all the time,” says Ebert. “It was quite remarkable. We thought we’d be dealing with one of his assistants or underlings but no, it was Mr Trump the whole time. He would send us these glossy plans and lots of squiggles on them and centre lines.”

The coastal stretch that runs north along the Firth of Clyde, beginning at the fourth and culminating at the eleventh, and punctuated by the famous lighthouse on a rock outcrop beside the ninth green, is one of the most remarkable sequences of golf in the world.

Refusing to rest on its laurels, the resort continues – now under the direction of Donald’s second son, Trump Organization executive vice president Eric Trump – to explore every possibility to enhance the course, with a philosophy of maximising drama that was recently also evident in the construction of the New course at Trump Aberdeen, handled by the same team that completed the latest work at Turnberry, Golflink Evolve’s Esie O’ Mahony and shaper Jamie O’ Reilly.

The most significant of the recent changes is the rebuilding of the par four seventh hole, playing from the same teeing area over a fairway that has been lowered by two metres and now turns much more sharply left to a new horizon green. The preferred drive is now a more pronounced draw, splitting three fairway bunkers and setting up an approach to a green where the ocean looms beyond.

That approach must be played between the deep rough left of the fairway and two revetted bunkers on the right. The ideal line to run the ball into the green is from the left half of the fairway.

Moving the seventh green closer to the beach required the tees for the eighth (background) to be shifted inland, giving it a straighter alignment (Photo: Trump Turnberry)

While every hole on Turnberry’s coastline stretch plays in the same general direction, with water on the left, there is enormous variety in their nature and green sites and no sense of repetition.

The new green on the seventh sits very close to the beach, with a depression on the front left and various rumples creating several pinnable areas that will have a strong bearing on how the hole is best played. “It’s got a bit of movement, but it’s not crazy,” says Ebert. “It’s not like some of these resort courses that you see where, I think, the elevation change has just got out of control really.” The new green site was formerly occupied by tees for the eighth hole, so these have now been shifted further inland. This gives the eighth a new alignment, playing pretty much dead straight, which feels more suited to a fairway that cambers from left to right. Ebert has added a new bunker to the left that helps frame the hole from the new tees.

Trump’s investment in Turnberry, and desire to maximise the potential of the site, has given Ebert the opportunity to implement ideas that he had proposed to the previous owners but were perhaps too ambitious or expensive for them – the par-three eleventh, introduced in 2016, a prime example. The Trumps are very hands on, and Ebert finds himself providing the balance, sometimes embracing their ideas and sometimes – in the best interests of the course – reining them in. “He did call me the most stubborn man he’s ever met a couple of times,” says Ebert of Donald Trump. “I was at one point pushing for the ninth to be a short par four, and Mr Trump was absolutely adamant it should be a long three. And I think he was entirely right. He wanted the fourteenth green up on the top of the hill, and I had to suggest that it should be just off to the side of that hill in a nice little dell where the wind wouldn’t quite affect the balls as much.”

There is compromise from both sides. After insisting that the par-three sixth be moved closer to the coast, Donald Trump learned that Ebert had been spotted kissing one of his favourite greens goodbye, so relented. “It’s still here today, maybe hanging on by a thread,” laughs Ebert.

One byproduct of a series of such thrilling holes is the risk of anticlimax. While the sense of anticipation builds on the first three holes, it is understandable that golfers might spend holes twelve onwards thinking about what has passed, rather than what lies ahead. Had the untouched land been given to an architect today, one might expect their routing to include several separate visits to the coast. It is difficult, however, to imagine how the layout created by Philip Mackenzie Ross (after the original had been converted to an airfield during the Second World War) could further be adapted to allow this, particularly with the lighthouse serving as perhaps the most iconic and impressive halfway house in the world.

The ninth hole was converted to a par three as part of the work completed in 2016 (Trump Turnberry)

The Trump Organization is clearly conscious of this, and its answer lies in continuing to invest in elevating the experience of the inland holes on the Ailsa. In the latest project, there have been refinements to holes twelve to fifteen and seventeen.

One notable evolution over recent years has been an increase in the acreage of exposed sand areas. To my eye, these are having a positive effect on the aesthetic of the landscape, preferable to bland expanses of scrub that previously occupied areas between some holes. But that view is not universal.

“Sometimes we get a lot of criticism for putting them in,” explains Ebert. “We defend that by saying you look at the old pictures of Turnberry or any of our links, and there was a lot more exposed sand. Over the years the vegetation has grown to cover all that sand up. So, there’s an element of restoring the landscape, and there’s an element of ecology in creating habitat for flora and fauna to take over. For me, it beautifies the course and the landscape even more. Not everybody thinks that, but certainly there are a number of reasons to introduce those or reintroduce those features.”

So is work on the Ailsa now complete? A philosophy of continuous improvement seems more likely. Most of the heavy lifting may have been done but there remain a few places – the par-three fifteenth, for example – where there is certainly scope for more drama. And that is the hallmark of a Trump golf course.