The Machrie Golf Course, or "The Machrie Links", is located on

Islay Islay ( ; gd, Ìle, sco, Ila) is the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Known as "The Queen of the Hebrides", it lies in Argyll just south west of Jura, Scotland, Jura and around north of the Northern Irish coast. The isl ...

, in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. The word "machrie" is a corruption of the

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

'' machair'', which means more or less the same as "links" did on the east coast of Scotland. The Machrie is an iconic Scottish Championship links style golf course. stretching to 7024 yards from the back tees. An original Willie Campbell design dating back to 1891 it was intentionally made long, at least by 19th Century standards, to attract golfers to Islay. The course was unusual in that its layout crosses the dunes instead of running alongside them like most links courses do, which resulted in multiple blind shots. The Machrie Links hosted a famous match in 1901 between James Braid,

John Henry Taylor John Henry "J.H." Taylor (19 March 1871 – 10 February 1963) was an English professional golfer and one of the pioneers of the modern game of golf. Taylor is considered to be one of the best golfers of all time. He was a significant golf ...

and Harry Vardon for a prize of £100, reputed to be the largest prize of its kind at that time in the British Isles. Harry Vardon called Mount Zion, originally the first hole, "the hardest hole I have seen". The links later hosted the Western Isles Open Championship in June 1935.

Major updates

The Links was acquired by

Gavyn Davies Gavyn Davies, OBE (born 27 November 1950) is a former Goldman Sachs partner who was the chairman of the BBC from 2001 until 2004. On 28 January 2004 he announced that he was resigning his BBC post following the publication of the Hutton Inqui ...

and his wife

Susan Nye, Baroness Nye Susan Jane Nye, Baroness Nye (born 17 May 1955) is the former Director of Government Relations and former diary secretary to ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, British prime minister Gordon Brown. In May 2010 it was announced that Nye wou ...

in 2011; it had been placed in administration in late 2010. The course was redesigned recently, by architect DJ Russell, and reopened in May 2017. The overall rating by Golf World Top 100 in 2019 was 80.6%. The publication's review that discussed the significant design changes included this comment: "Russell’s routing has a much greater number of expansive views of the sea on the front nine. The internal out of bounds has also gone. Lots of the blind shots have

one 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

too." After the redesign, the web site Top 100 Golf Courses rated this one as #21 in Scotland in 2019. In addition to the 18-hole Links, the facility offers a Wee course (six par-3 holes) a covered driving range, a short game area and the Hebrides putting course. The new version of the Machrie Hotel, now has 47 bedrooms, including 4 2-bedroom lodges; it opened in 2018, replacing a predecessor, that was described as "dilapidated". The previous Machrie hotel had 16 bedrooms and 15 separate lodges. The Islay Golf Club is a privately owned club founded in 1891, which has its home at the Machrie Golf Links for its members.Islay Golf Club
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References

Good history of the Machrie in The Scottish Golf Book p. 171 including Vardon's quote on Mt. Zion

Extreme Golf p. 148 discusses the design of the Machrie

Machrie Hotel and Golf Links

New York Times 1894 article on the first U.S. Open where Willie Campbell placed second. He was a famous early golf professional in America designing the original 18 holes at "The Country Club" in Brookline Massachusetts, the oldest country club in the U.S and serving as head pro.

Islay Golf Club
{{DEFAULTSORT:Machrie Golf Course Golf clubs and courses in Argyll and Bute Islay