Royal Aberdeen Golf Club — home of the Balgownie Links — is one of the oldest and most distinguished golf clubs in the world. Laid out on the rugged coastline north of Aberdeen, the Balgownie Links plays through towering dunes with the North Sea as a constant backdrop. It is a proper old-school links test: narrow, unforgiving, and utterly magnificent. Few courses in Scotland combine such great age with such demanding and beautiful golf.
Founded in 1780 as the Society of Golfers at Aberdeen, the club is the sixth oldest in the world. Royal patronage was granted in 1903, and the course at Balgownie has remained largely unchanged in its essential character for well over a century. It has hosted numerous Scottish Amateur Championships and the Senior Open Championship on multiple occasions.
Royal Aberdeen is the kind of course that reminds you what links golf is truly about. No gimmicks, no manufactured drama — just a magnificent piece of ground shaped over centuries. For guests who want to venture north and experience golf on the north-east coast of Scotland, Balgownie is the defining destination.