Set amidst the great dunes of Scotland, Trump Aberdeen embraces mile after mile of spectacular Aberdeenshire coastline located in the North East of Scotland

Dr Martin Hawtree’s father and grandfather before him designed and laid out many courses worldwide but are perhaps best known for the Open Championship course, Royal Birkdale. The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St.Andrews tasks Dr Hawtree each year with the design modifications at all their Open Championship venues before each tournament. Dr Hawtree’s fierce adherence to working with the natural environment has allowed him to create the most natural links golf courses on this site – Trump Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland. The design of the golf course has involved an iterative process of studying the site in great detail, entering into a dialogue between the norms of classic and championship golf course layout on the one hand the physical, ecological, economic constraints of the site on the other; working out ideas and schemes for the layout as hypotheses and then testing them against the site. The dialogue was enriched by the client on the one side and the project’s environmental consultants on the other. Indeed the iterative process has not stopped and will not stop until the grass starts to germinate. Working closely with the environmental scientists the vision pivots on sensitive integration into this landscape.

The golf course follows a classic pattern of two out-and-back loops of nine holes. All 18 holes thread their way engagingly through the dunes, rising here to find views of the sea and coastline, plunging there into secluded valleys, offering a sequence of superlative topographies, landscapes, alternating between spaciousness and enclosure, then panoramic view, and the whole time a rich texture of vegetation and wildlife habitats surrounding the golf holes. The golf course will lack for nothing. The landscape framework of the site comes close to an ideal. There is nothing missing and the layout as conceived would contain no weak holes. It will produce simply the most dramatic, stimulating, invigorating stretch of golf anywhere I have seen in my career”. Dr Martin Hawtree