Tag Archives: Kingsbarns

Kingsbarns to host 2017 Women’s British Open

kingsbarns

Kingsbarns Golf Links is delighted to announce its selection to host the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2017. Located near St Andrews, the highly rated links course has been a part of the men’s European Tour annually for 13 years earning a reputation as one of the most admired venues on the circuit. This will, however, be the first time Kingsbarns will host a Major Championship.

“We are honoured to host the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2017,” said Alan Hogg, chief executive at Kingsbarns. “We have welcomed tour events to Kingsbarns for many years but this will be on a different scale. The prestige of the Women’s Open is growing every year. More importantly, seeing the very best lady golfers competing over the Kingsbarns links should be very exciting. We are extremely proud to have been selected to host such a quality event.”

Consistently ranked as one of the top golf courses in the world, Kingsbarns has co-hosted the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship for over a decade. During this time the course has won praise from touring pros and celebrities alike who admire the traditional Scottish links design with views of the North Sea from every hole.

“What I like is the risk and reward,” said Paul Casey, during the 2012 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. “It is a very enjoyable golf course to play because you can make birdies, you can make eagles but there is a lot of danger out there as well. You’ve got a mix of the fun stuff and the tough stuff wrapped in a package which is beautiful.”

As Hogg explained, however, the Ricoh Women’s British Open will provide an entirely new test for the world’s best players when the Open arrives in Fife in 2017. “Because of the round-robin format of the Dunhill, the course has to be set up identically over the three days, which includes weather-tolerant pin placements,” he said. “During the Ricoh Women’s British Open, the full range of hole locations can be utilised on Kingsbarns’ large and undulating greens.”

The Ricoh Women’s British Open will also offer television viewers a first look at a closing stretch that includes some of Kingsbarns’ most picturesque holes. The challenging par 5 12th along 550 yards of rugged East Neuk coastline, the stunning par 3 15th, requiring a tee shot across an expanse of the North Sea, or the challenge of the 17th have not been featured before on television. “The closing holes will provide the perfect setting for an exciting Sunday finish,” said Hogg. “We can’t wait!”

Kingsbarns is regarded as one of the world’s best courses holding the top spot in GolfWeek’s Top 100 modern courses in the UK and ranked 18th in Golf Digest’s Top 100 Best Courses Outside the US. Art Dunkley, director of Kingsbarns Golf Links said: “People have said many flattering things about our course and facilities since we opened in 2000 but being selected to host our first Major Championship is perhaps the greatest affirmation of all. Our objective has been to create one of the world’s best links golf experiences and deliver it to our guests with a personal touch. That is something our management and staff members feel very strongly about. The honour of hosting the Ricoh Women’s British Open, I believe, results directly from our meticulous focus on providing excellent golf course conditioning and individual customer service every day.”

The statement was endorsed by Shona Malcolm, the LGU’s CEO, who highlighted the significance of the selection. “We believe Kingsbarns will be a wonderful addition to the Women’s Open rota. Their excitement at hosting their first Major will make the 2017 edition very special and we look forward to a long relationship with them,” she commented. “Kingsbarns fits perfectly with our commitment of ensuring the world’s best women players showcase their talents on the world’s best golf courses.”

Paul Bush from Event Scotland added: “Bringing Major Championships to Scotland, the Home of Golf, outlines our ambition to host the biggest events in world golf and the addition of the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2017 at Kingsbarns further strengthens our envied portfolio of golf tournaments in 2014 and beyond. This is also a great compliment to Kingsbarns Golf Links and shows just how established the venue has become on the global golf map.”

After successfully hosting final qualifying for the Ricoh Women’s British Open in 2013 when initial assessments were made by the Ladies Golf Union, Kingsbarns is now part of an established Open rota.

Source:  Kingsbarns

Klein on Design: No. 18 at Kingsbarns

Bradley S. Klein. Golfweek’s architecture editor. offers his opinion on one great hole:
Yards: 444. par 4
Architect: Kyle Phillips,1999
Where: Fife, Scotland
Event: Alfred Dunhill Links Championship,Oct 1-4

It’s great because . .. Kingsbarns, now a decade old, revolutionized Scottish golf with a retro-links look that combines scruffy old dunes, deep bunkers and greens contoured to function as hazards when approached from the wrong angle. The finishing hole calls for a drive into a prevailing wind that quarters from the right and brings fairway bunkers into play on the left side. From there, the approach is to a steeply sloped green pitched above a nasty burn – the only forced-carry water hazard in play from a fairway shot at Kingsbarns – that will capture any approach that comes up a little short.

It would be even better if… they would rebuild the steep back-to-front green and marginally modify its slope. As for high handicappers
looking to lay up on their second shots, the fairway tilts toward the burn and leaves an awkward third shot from a downhill lie to an uphill green – virtually impossible for the kind of player who has laid up. It would help here to counter slope the fairway and provide just a little more cushion for the high-handicapper, lest he or she finish the round with golf ball in pocket (or in the water) onthe stem approach.

Brad Klein
Golfweek
September 19. 2009
www.golfweek.com

Celebrated Living Magazine – Top Courses of the Year

#19 KINGSBARNS GOLF LINKS, SCOTLAND (TIE)
Not even a decade old, Kingsbarns is now considered an essential addition to a St Andrews-Carnoustie pilgrimage. 011-44-1334-460860, kingsbarns.com

#20 DUNDONALD LINKS , SCOTLAND
Like Kingsbarns, this course is designed by Kyle Phillips, whose authentic work in the Old World belies his New World roots. 011-44-1294-314000, dundonaldlinks.com

Celebrated Living Magazine, Summer 2009

R & A – Kingsbarns Deal to Benefit St Andrews Golfers

R & A Golf Club News Bulletin
By Kieth Mackie

A substantial interest free loan has been granted by the R&A to the developers of the new golf links at Kingsbarns. In return they will make a number of starting times available to local golfers in St. Andrews and north-east Fife.

The agreement has been reached after discussions between the R & A, St. Andrews Links Trust and local golf clubs identified the growing pressure for starting times on the St. Andrews courses. Read More…

Kingsbarns Hole 12 Ranks 6th

Golf World 2005

Why should I play it?
It’s just about the closest thing you’ll get to the 18th at Pebble Beach – in other words, a sweeping right-to-left par-five that skirts the rocky seashore of the North Sea. Its setting is eye-popping and at the end of it all, you’ll find a wickedly sloping and enormous green that seems to keep on going round the headland. Because the drive is downhill, birdies are possible. But so are bogeys, double-bogeys… Read More…

Phillips gains renown with Kingsbarns

GolfWeb
By Robert Thompson

For years Kyle Phillips toiled in relative obscurity, his name unknown to all but golf insiders who were aware of his work as an associate under Robert Trent Jones Jr.

Eventually, after 16 years, Phillips left the Trent Jones Jr. camp to head out on his own. But even then he found much of his work in Europe, removed from the eyes of the golfing multitudes and the sport’s ever-present glossy magazines. Read More…

Kingsbarns Golf Links Names Best New International Course

Golf Digest
By Ron Whitten

Six miles south of Scotland’s Old Course at St. Andrews, along gentle coves of the North Sea, carved into hillsides that cant like a massive, curved amphitheater, is the new Kingsbarns Golf Links – so splendiferous in its concept and execution that we felt compelled to declare it our first-ever Best New International Course. Read More…

The New Old Course and the Sea

Golf and Leisure Magazine

All roads in golf history lead to St. Andrews, and although the town has six courses of choice, the Old Course is the one on which every golfer eventually wishes to test his or her game. Unfortunately, getting in a round there usually means getting lucky in the club’s tee-time lottery, with odds running about 1 in 3 against you. But if you draw a short straw – or even if you don’t – don’t miss the entirely redesigned Kingsbarns Golf Links (001-44-1334/474-364). Just seven miles from St. Andrews, Kingsbarns was open as early as 1792, but was closed in 1939 to be used for military maneuvers (making bunker an ambiguous term). Read More…

Kingsbarns is on a Par with Links of the Past

Financial Times

When Alfred Dunhill recently announced that its Nations Cup tournament, hitherto held at St Andrews every October, was to be replaced next year by a pro-am competition over three links courses on Scotland’s east coast, the name of one of the host venues must have caused a deal of puzzlement. The Old Course at St Andrews, together with Carnoustie, fitted perfectly into Dunhill’s stated ambition of making the tournament a celebration of links golf, but Kingsbarns? Read More…

Shock of the New

Golf World International

The boom in golf course building is over. Only a handful of good new tracks have opened since 1998 and yet among them are some corkers. First among them is Kingsbarns, an amazing new links on the coast of Fife. Opened just this year, it may prove to be the last true links course ever built in the UK, and already it’s being mooted as a possible future Open venue. If you think Loch Lomond has exploded like a grenade into our top 100, wait till you see what Kingsbarns does. Read More…

Top