As much as the tournament's champion, Toronto-based golf architect Doug Carrick will consider himself the big winner at the end of Saturday's final round of the Ladies' Scottish Open.
The $300,000, 54-hole tourney is an international showcase for the new Carrick on Loch Lomond course near Glasgow, the first Scottish layout designed by a Canadian. Carrick will be in the gallery watching Laura Davies, Catriona Matthew, Janice Moodie and other stars compete in the first Ladies European Tour event held in Scotland since 2001.
"I have to pinch myself every time I'm here," Carrick says of his $16.5-million course, thought to be the most expensive ever constructed in Scotland. "Building in the cradle of golf is a dream come true."
Set on the ruggedly beautiful shoreline of Loch Lomond, the inspiration for Scotland's most famous ballad, The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond, the 7,100-yard course opened June 1. It's located next door to the De Vere Cameron House hotel, an 18th-century baronial mansion currently undergoing a major expansion and renovation. St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Gleneagles, clubs whose colourful histories are part of the fabric of the game, are all less than a two-hour drive away.
Scottish golf officials are hoping that the reintroduction of the Ladies' Scottish Open (an event last held in 1995) will give a boost to the women's game throughout the birthplace of golf. Though Scotland has several marquee men's events - including the British Open, held in Scotland every three years - the absence of a major women's tournament has been regarded as something of a national scandal.
Carrick made his name in Canada with such award-winning layouts as Greywolf in British Columbia, Angus Glen and Bigwin Island in Ontario, and Terra Nova and Humber Valley in Newfoundland. He has also worked internationally on projects in Austria and Hungary.
Approached by De Vere Hotels in 2000, he won the coveted commission by sketching a series of hole designs that perfectly captured De Vere's desire for a traditional heathlands-style course that would fit naturally with the site's rough-and-tumble terrain.
"Doug just nailed it," says Craig Mitchell, De Vere's managing director. "We had talked about going with a more internationally famous architect. But once we got to know Doug - and saw his work - he was our guy."
Bluebells and other wildflowers blanketed the hillsides when Carrick first laid eyes on the site. Also in flaming bloom was the gorse, whose yellow flowers make beautiful a thick and treacherously thorny bush that bedevils golfers throughout Scotland.
"I'm not a religious man, but when I first saw this property, I actually prayed that I'd get the job," Carrick says, laughing.
Of Scotland's more than 550 courses, the Carrick on Loch Lomond is the only one where golfers play the front nine holes in the gently rolling Lowlands and the back nine in the craggy and sloping Highlands. Carrick's design weaves through open meadows, detours around inland lagoons and climbs into the dramatic Highlands before climaxing with a stretch of three holes on the shore of Loch Lomond.
Carrick painstakingly contoured his fairways to take advantage of the spectacular views, not only of the loch and its surrounding hillsides, but also the Luss Hills. Westward lies Inveraray and Scotland's great sea lochs, and to the east the rugged Trossachs, the fabled homeland of Rob Roy.
Known for his traditional approach to design, Carrick built old-style rectangular tee boxes and sod-walled bunkers. In play throughout the layout are large areas of gorse and tall fescue. The native grasses, a striking contrast to the manicured fairways, are also seen dancing in the breeze in the rough beyond several bunkers.
"Every day brought new surprises," Carrick says wryly of building a course in the historic home of the Scottish clans.
The discovery that the site was of archeological importance delayed the course's opening by as much as a year. Glasgow University students descended on the property, digging more than five kilometres of trenches and unearthing everything from neolithic jewellery and pottery to an early Christian burial site and Iron Age roundhouses.
Before the trenches could be refilled, the artifacts left on the site were covered with a preservative fabric, their positions carefully recorded.
In 2002, the golf course and surrounding area were incorporated into Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, Scotland's first national parkland. Suddenly, Carrick's course became of vital interest to often-prickly planning and environmental boards, which insisted on being consulted every step of the way.
But all those troubles will be forgotten this weekend as Carrick, who is on the short list of golf architects being considered for another prestigious Scottish project, walks his fairways during the playing of the Ladies' Scottish Open. The Carrick on Loch Lomond will also host the tournament in 2008 and 2009. De Vere officials hope that by successfully reintroducing a regular women's event to Scotland, their Loch Lomond course might one day be considered as a site for the Solheim Cup, the prestigious biennial match play competition between the best women players from Europe and the United States.
"I feel like I've won the lottery," Carrick says. "Building this course is by far the biggest break of my career."
***
Pack your clubs
Carrick on Loch Lomond 01389 713655; http://www.devere.co.uk. Green fee: $205. The De Vere Cameron House hotel offers 96 bedrooms, including five luxury suites. Nightly room rates from $290 a person.
For more information, visit http://www.visitscotland.com.
