Cruden Bay Golf Club

Although it sits just 20 miles north of Aberdeen, a city of 200,000, Cruden Bay feels remote. The clubhouse overlooks a valley bordered by a line of dunes along the North Sea. It's a raw, magnificent landscape.

The dunes seem more Irish than Scottish: huge, craggy, and fearsome. They are the singular focal point of the 1899 routing by Old Tom Morris and Archie Simpson, which Tom Simpson and Herbert Fowler refined in 1926. Most golfers will be immediately impressed by the short holes amid the dunes, including the short par-4 third, eighth, and 14th as well as a stunning trio of par 3s in Nos. 4, 15, and 16. But they may find themselves thinking just as much about the subtler charms of the course's two intricate par 5s, Nos. 6 and 13, and the vexing par-4 17th, with its towering center-line mound and plateau green.

Cruden Bay's old-fashioned spirit, from its simply constructed greens to its polystand fairway turf, has long been central to its appeal. In 2014, however, Tom Mackenzie of Mackenzie & Ebert led a (thankfully modest) modernization effort, reshaping some bunkers in a naturalized style and moving the ninth hole to the edge of a cliff. These changes savor of 21st-century architecture and feel out of step with the rest of the course.

Take Note…

A crucial add-on. Cruden Bay features one of the finest “relief nines” in British golf: St. Olaf Golf Course, a 2,463-yard loop with four par 3s and five par 4s. St. Olaf meanders through the wrinkled valley at the center of Cruden Bay’s property before visiting the eastern dunes for a striking pair of par 3s, Nos. 6 and 7. The greens, fashioned by Tom Simpson and Herbert Fowler in 1925, are more interestingly contoured than the Championship course’s. You shouldn’t leave Cruden Bay without at least walking St. Olaf.

View from the top. The second floor of Cruden Bay’s blufftop clubhouse is mostly taken up by an excellent restaurant, which has tall windows providing views of the golf-filled valley below. Play 27 holes (18 at the Championship course and nine at St. Olaf) and spend the rest of the day here.

Dune tales. Caddie lore has it that the large mound in the middle of the 17th fairway is a Viking burial site linked to the Battle of Cruden Bay in 1012. Or maybe it’s where Protestants piled the corpses of Catholics during the Reformation conflicts of the mid-1500s? I heard both versions. Another possibility is that it’s a sand dune.

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