North Berwick Golf Club (West Links)

Favorite Hole

No. 16, par 4, 370-378 yards

No. 16 at North Berwick takes you away from the water toward some of the flattest land on the course. Appropriately, the hole has one of the most sublime greens in golf.

Resembling a mix between a Double Plateau and a Biarritz, the 16th green sits on a hard right-to-left angle and has a chasm running through the middle. This design creates an insanely difficult back-left pin position (note: the author hit it stiff to here), along with a more gettable one on the front-right plateau. Slightly increasing the challenge of the front-right hole location is a subtle ridge running in front of the green—likely an old, now-buried wall. The ideal spot for your approach is on the right half of the fairway.

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Overall Thoughts

One of the benefits of my job is that I get to play a lot of new courses every year. For me, these courses typically fall into a few buckets: ones I’m happy to have played, ones I’m happy to be done with, and ones I dream about returning to. For me, the West Links at North Berwick Golf Club is very much in the third category.

Last year, when planning my first trip to Scotland, I set just two requirements: I needed to see North Berwick, and I needed to cover the Open Championship at the Old Course at St. Andrews. We carved out an entire day for the West Links. Our plan was to spend a full day there, soaking it all in, but that fell apart, as plans often do. (We got a last-minute invite to play the Old Course in the afternoon. I know, woe is me.)

The point of this story is that I wished I had gotten more time at North Berwick. It was an exhilarating round, but it left me wanting more: more shots, more chances to play the holes in different ways, more looks at the captivating topography and greens. But I guess that feeling says a lot on its own. A great way to judge a course is by how much you want to go back out immediately after your first round. Few, if any, courses have made me want to play more golf than North Berwick’s West Links.

So for now, I’ll just compile a few of my favorite things about my experience there:

I love how the course interacts with the town. It seems like you make just one turn from downtown and you are in the golf course’s parking lot. How the homes and buildings rise up the hill and stack on top of each other make North Berwick feel bigger than it is. As you reach the outskirts of the course, though, these homes dissipate and eventually disappear. Then, on your way back, the buildings get larger as your remaining time on the links gets shorter and shorter.

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North Berwick’s routing interacts beautifully not only with the town but also with the sea. The course starts with a bang—the first three holes are right on the coast—but then the routing turns inland and stays there until the 10th. The second seaside stretch ends at the 15th, but there’s one more dramatic encounter with the sea on the 17th, and the 18th finishes back where you started, steps away from the town.

The second tee shot is astounding: you tee up and hit it over the beach to a fairway that runs diagonally to the right. It’s basically a Scottish version of the drive on the 18th hole at Pebble Beach. Yet you hear very little about this shot in the general discourse on North Berwick. This speaks, I think, to two factors: 1) how fantastic the rest of the course, and 2) how important placement in the round is. Maybe this one is simply to early to resonate. But it’s a truly striking moment, especially after a warm-up in a cage and a mid- to long iron off the first tee. Talk about being thrown into the deep end.

On the third hole, you meet a peculiar cross hazard: a wall and it feels like an entrance to the next part of the course. At this point in our round, Brendan Porath started cooking and actually hit his tee shot through the four-foot gap in the wall.

The inland stretch is sometimes maligned but I found it fascinating. I was blown away by the complexity of the greens. They sit wonderfully on the ground and have flowing contours that seem formed by sand. The contouring of the second green and the subtlety of the eighth particularly stood out.

When discussing the closing stretch, people often go straight to the 13th hole, the famous “Pit.” But I’d go back to the 11th hole. I love how it tees off in the seaside dunes and ventures down to a little valley before playing back into the dunes at the green. A tee shot hugging the dune ridge gives a massive advantage for finding the green in two.

Likewise, the 12th is one of my favorites—almost my choice for the “favorite hole” in this writeup. The tee shot is modest, but once you crest the hill, you’ll find a tremendous view of the sea, with a beautiful green sitting out over the sea. A terrific driver-wedge hole.

While somewhat overplayed on social media, the Pit is undoubtedly phenomenal, and a remarkable example of what a simple wall, along with a shallow, angled green, can do to influence strategy. Play left, tight to the bunker and dune ridge, and you’ll get the best angle. Play away and deal with the wall and the shallowness of the green. Spectacular golf doesn’t require spectacular land.

I played the 14th, “Perfection,” in a state you often you find yourself in with world-class golf holes: utter bewilderment. If it wasn’t for a guide in our group, I doubt I would have played as conservatively as I did, with an iron up the right. The second shot reminded me of the thrill that the blind fourth at Fishers Island provides. Cameron Hurdus and I speed-walked over the hill to see where our shots ended up.

Whenever I had seen photos of the 15th, I was confused by the look of the original “Redan” hole. It didn’t look at all like the holes I had played in America that were supposedly inspired by it. In person, it’s amazing how vicious the false front is.

In the finishing stretch, the 17th hole sits on arguably the best golf land on the entire course. The choppy, irregular contours are sublime.

Closing out a match on No. 18 is as thrilling as it gets. The hole entices you to go for the green and take on… the parking lot! Hit the shot and get the reward of an eagle try; bail out left and your short game will be tested. An apt finish to a thrilling round. -AJ

3 Eggs

(How We Rate Golf Courses)

North Berwick’s setting is ideal and its land perfectly scaled for the game. The design is one of the most playful and fun anywhere, not to mention one of the most influential in golf history. The presentation is good enough for an Egg, but could be better. There are fairway and green dimensions to recapture. It’s my understanding this is a point of emphasis for the future.

Additional Content

Eclectic 18 UK – Hole No. 13: “Pit,” North Berwick

Course Tour

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