East Kilbride

Within ten years of its formation in 1900, East Kilbride Golf Club had moved from Show Park to a new home at Blacklaw, where another 9-hole course was brought into use. By 1923, another thirty-eight acres of land had been acquired, allowing the club to fashion an extended 18-hole layout.

During World War II, only the greens were maintained (with grazing cattle allowed to roam the course) then the Army requisitioned the clubhouse. When hostilities ended, the club struggled on for almost a decade before a 9-hole layout was eventually recreated, opening in 1956.

This course would prove to be a temporary arrangement because the club upped sticks once again in 1967, decamping to a new site at Nerston, where Fred W. Hawtree was tasked with laying out a modern 18-hole course for the members and this layout is still in play today.

Playing to a par of 71, with an overall yardage of just over 6,400 yards, the course occupies an undulating site on the northern periphery of the New Town. Fairways are configured as two returning circuits, where each nine ends in front of a new clubhouse that was built in 2011, replacing the one destroyed in a fire the year before.

The two most difficult holes on the course are both par fives that play uphill in the same general direction and into the prevailing wind. The first one, “The Horsey Gill” at the 529-yard 7th, veers left to the target whilst the second one, “Law” at the 496-yard 13th, bends right to the green. Rest assured, not many will card a “5” at both of these tough holes.