Muirfield - Scotland

Muirfield is the home of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, founded in 1744, ten years before the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, making it the oldest golf club in the world. The members originally played at the links of Leith but in 1836 the club moved six miles east to Musselburgh. The course eventually became overcrowded and in 1891 the club moved further east to Muirfield, where it has been ever since. Muirfield is the blueblood of Scottish golf, not only in its lineage and membership, but in the elegance and fairness of its design. The course is famous for its routing, with the clockwise outward nine encircling the counterclockwise inner nine. Many great champions have won the British Open at Muirfield, beginning with Harold Hilton in 1892, and including Jack Nicklaus in 1966, Lee Trevino in 1972, Tom Watson in 1980, Nick Faldo in 1987 and 1992, and, most recently, Ernie Els in 2002.

Turnberry Resout (Ailsa Course) - Scotland

Turnberry's Ailsa Course is one of extravagant and unforgettable beauty, with a sweeping view across the links from the terraced lawns of the grandiose, red roofed hotel. The hotel and the two original courses were developed by the Glasgow & South Western Railway, which took over the private 13-hole course of the third Marquis of Ailsa in 1907. During World War II, the Ailsa Course and its sister course, the Arran, were turned into concrete runways used by the RAF. It seemed like golf might be finished at Turnberrry, but eventually, through the perseverance of Frank Hole, the managing director of the hotel, the Scottish course architect Philip Mackenzie Ross was commissioned to resurrect and redesign a new Ailsa Course, completed in 1951. In 1977, Turnberry hosted its first British Open, won by Tom Watson by one stroke over Jack Nicklaus in their famous "duel in the sun," and the glory of Ross's design was revealed to the golf world. The ninth hole, with the tee perched precariously on a promontory and with the emblematic whitewashed lighthouse to the left, vaunts over and along the cliffs, with views across the Firth of Clyde to the Isle of Arran with its steep, slumbering mountains, the Ailsa Craig bubbling out of the sea, and all the way west to the Mull of Kintyre in the distance.