{"id":304,"date":"2012-05-10T23:57:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T23:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daviddesmith.com\/?p=304"},"modified":"2013-05-10T00:48:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T00:48:59","slug":"a-rainy-day-at-dunaverty-beats-a-lot-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/golf\/304\/a-rainy-day-at-dunaverty-beats-a-lot-of-things","title":{"rendered":"A Rainy Day at Dunaverty Beats… A Lot of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dunaverty Golf Club, Southend, Scotland<\/p><\/div>\n

The biggest mistake most golfers make when they plan a golf pilgrimage to Scotland is focusing on just the big-name courses \u2013 the trophy courses, the ones that host Open Championships.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve only got five or six days to play over here, it\u2019s understandable that you\u2019d want to walk the same fairways as Nicklaus, Watson, Norman and Woods \u2013 and before them Jones, Taylor, Braid and the Tom Morrises, Old and Young.\u00a0 But Scotland is blessed with an innumerable number of equally delightful lesser-known courses, most of which are in close proximity to the big boys.\u00a0 Dunaverty Golf Club<\/a> is just such a course.<\/p>\n

Today, our Golf Road Warriors group played Dunaverty on a quintessential Scottish Day: gray, 20 mph winds, showery spells.\u00a0 And it was magic.<\/p>\n

This 18-hole, par-66 layout is located at the tip of the Mull of Kintyre in the town of Southend, just down the road from Machrihanish Dunes and Machrihanish Golf Club.\u00a0 It\u2019s only 4799 yards long, but it\u2019s an incredibly fun and scenic track.<\/p>\n

For the Road Warriors group, it was the first course we\u2019ve played on our visit to western Scotland.\u00a0 And in many ways, it was the perfect choice.\u00a0 After 20+ hours of traveling, you don\u2019t want to take on a full-blooded monster.\u00a0 But nor do you want to just check into your hotel and twiddle your thumbs until the next day\u2019s tee time beckons.\u00a0 Jumping out onto Dunaverty was the perfect way for our group to get our feet under us.\u00a0 From its rolling fairways, we were treated to beautiful views of Northern Ireland, Sanda Island, Ayrshire and the famous Ailsa Craig. The course winds up and down some steep hills, forces you to concentrate on your shots, but doesn\u2019t beat you up.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1899, Dunaverty has been remodeled, extended and tweaked over the years \u2013 to the point that the track you can play now is a both a good, fun test and an invigorating day. The par 3s here in particular will test your mettle \u2013 especially the 245-yard 6th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Dunaverty has produced many fine golfers over the years, although none with more renown than Belle Robertson. Robertson grew up on a nearby farm and developed her early golf skills at Dunaverty before going on to win just about every honor she could earn in the 1960\u2019s, 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s, including the Scottish Ladies\u2019 and British Women\u2019s Championships as well as representing Britain and Ireland in the Curtis Cup.<\/p>\n

Not many would have finished all 18 in the weather we played in at Dunaverty today.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t come across courses like this every day.\u00a0 Rain or shine, it\u2019s a joy here.\u00a0 Just ask Jim, the man of the clubhouse at Dunaverty.\u00a0 He’ll tell you in the warmest way how the sun always shines over this place.<\/p>\n

For more on the Golf Road Warriors Scotland adventures, go to: Golf Road Warriors Scotland<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The biggest mistake most golfers make when they plan a golf pilgrimage to Scotland is focusing on just the big-name… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,420357,420362,420364,420369,17],"tags":[1005774,450619,56,459400,39777,459571,53,4928,4282],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-machrihanish-dunes","category-visitscotland","category-dunaverty-gc","category-grw-scotland","category-courses-and-travel","tag-machrihanish-dunes","tag-dunaverty-golf-club","tag-old-tom-morris","tag-belle-robertson","tag-jacknicklaus","tag-booby-jones","tag-tiger-woods","tag-james-braid","tag-scotland-golf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2012\/05\/Dunaverty-GC-copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}