The Golf

There are 3 courses at Carnoustie, The Championship, The Burnside & The Buddon.

The Championship Course
This has the honour of hosting the 2007 Open and is legendary in the game. Each hole has it’s own name including famous holes such as Hogan’s Alley, Spectacles and Barry Burn. The course has developed into the one of the finest tests of golf and has already been used for six Opens and numerous other national championships. In 1931 American based Scot, Tommy Armour, was Carnoustie’s first Open Champion. Subsequently, Henry Cotton (1937), Ben Hogan (1953), Gary Player (1968), Tom Watson (1975) all tasted success before another Scot, Paul Lawrie, won the title in 1999 in one of the most dramatic finales ever seen at the world’s oldest championship. The course is par 72 and just under 7000 yards.

The Burnside
While Carnoustie is rightly famous for its testing Championship course, mention should also be made of the Burnside course which occupy the linksland beside it. The Burnside has been used as a qualifying venue for the Open and is a genuine links course that is both testing and fun to play. The fairways are narrow and corrugated bordered by heather, rough whins and the strategically placed pot bunkers that are a trademark of all three Carnoustie layouts.

The greens are generally small, sloping and difficult to hold, particularly in dry summer conditions. Add to this the seemingly ever present Carnoustie breezes, and you have a course that plays harder than the scorecard suggests. Many observers feel that several of the Burnside's holes would not be out of place on its more illustrious neighbour, citing the likes of the 14th and 17th to back up this argument. The 14th is a long par three of 228 yards that frequently plays into the prevailing wind. The tee and green are both raised and an expanse of heather, whins and sand must be carried to reach a green that slopes downward from back to front. The degree of difficulty is reflected in the fact that this hole is the stroke index one, unusually for a par three.

The 17th is a par four some 473 yards long. The fairway has many humps and bumps, making the middle of it extremely hard to find. To the left of the fairway, the ubiquitous Barry Burn lies in wait for any shot that is hooked or pulled severely, while on the right, rough-covered mounds provide many unpalatable lies.

 If the tee shot is long and straight, a daunting second shot is in prospect a long iron or wood that must cross the Barry Burn twice before reaching the safe haven of the subtly-contoured green.

The Buddon
The Buddon Links course begins parallel with the adjacent Championship course and continues around the outside edge of that layout, making it the closest to the North Sea of all Carnoustie's courses. First opened some 20 years ago, on land purchased from the Ministry of Defence (hence each hole is named after a famous battle), the Buddon Links received a mixed reaction from local players.

Since that time costal erosion and extensive alteration and upgrading have radically changed the original layout. These changes have met with great approval and the course is now extremely popular. Far shorter than either the Championship or the Burnside, the Buddon Links course has seven par threes and only one par five and is therefore a much less demanding test of golf that provides an enjoyable round for all standards of golfers.