Stirling

Kings Park lies under the escarpment on which Stirling Castle sits and it’s been a sporting venue for Scottish Kings and Queens for more than eight hundred years. Hunting was the royal sport of choice for much of that time but golfing activity was actually recorded in 1505 involving the monarch King James IV.

Stirling Golf Club was founded in 1869 and the club’s original course was a rather elementary 7-hole affair that lasted for just over a decade until Old Tom Morris established a 9-hole layout. Willie Fernie expanded this course to a full eighteen holes in 1904, which Sir Henry Cotton then redesigned in the mid-1960s.

Beginning and ending with a testing par five, the modern day course is a parkland delight. Holes to note include the back-to-back short par fours at the 2nd and 3rd, the par five 5th and par four 17th – which share the same double green – and the left doglegged, uphill 15th (“Cotton’s Fancy”), rated the toughest hole on the back nine.