Leven Links Golf Course

If you’ve ever made your way to St. Andrews from Edinburgh on a golf trip, you’ve passed the sign for Leven. Perhaps (excusably) excited by the final 15 miles to the Auld Grey Toon, you’ve more than likely skipped the turnoff, telling yourself you’d make your way back another day — or on another trip. Sure, it doesn’t possess the lure of the Home of Golf or the big name of Carnoustie, but squeezed into a strip of sandy linksland sits a course absolutely worth a stop and, for me, is exactly the kind of links experience I’m looking for on a golf trip. 

Leven won’t wow you with huge dunes or dramatic topography, but its land is perfectly scaled for golf. There’s enough movement to create exciting moments of blindness and quirk with the type of links turf that propels balls this way and that, generating a consistently fun anticipation through all 18 holes. The course began with nine holes in 1846 before expanding to 18 in 1868. This routing utilized the land east of Mile Dyke — land that now occupies the neighboring Lundin Links. In 1909, due to popularity-induced summer congestion, both courses re-opened as separate 18-hole layouts that played to their own side of that stone boundary wall. While the course isn’t composed of the same mystical lore as some of its Fife neighbors, it feels perfectly content situated both physically and spiritually between them.  

Take Note...

One Course, Two Starting Points. When Leven expanded to 18 holes in 1868, it played all the way to the eastern edge of the sandy linksland, now the site of Lundin’s clubhouse. Since there were multiple clubs that shared the links, with clubhouses at either end, the course had two starting points depending on which club you belonged to.

First Modern 18 GREEN Course? Although St. Andrews had been reduced to 18 holes by this point, most of the holes were played into double greens. Leven claims to be the first course to include 18 separate fairways and greens. 

Mile Dyke. The stone wall (or Dyke) between Leven and Lundin is older than both the courses it divides, dating back to the 18th century.

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