10 new Scottish golf courses currently in the pipeline

Coul Links

Where: Embo, Highlands
Designer: TBC
ETA: TBC

An extraordinary saga, this. Plans to transform a 32-acre site at Coul Links, near Dornoch, into a new world-class golf development appeared to be dead in the water last year when Scottish Government ministers threw out previously approved plans for the Coore-Crenshaw course.

Highland councillors had approved the project – led by American duo Mike Keiser and Todd Warnock – in June 2019 before ministers called in the planning application for further inspection.

Following a public inquiry, government ministers retracted the permission, saying the course would have a “significant” impact on rare plantlife, wintering and breeding birds, and even the dunes themselves.

And that was that… or so it seemed.

Earlier this year, local supporters of the proposed course formed a group called ‘Communities For Coul’, a not-for-profit organisation designed to breathe life back into the development.

Interestingly, a number of other nearby golf clubs, including Brora, Golspie and Tain, have pledged support to the resurrected plans.

Whether or not ‘Communities For Coul’ can succeed where the original proposal failed remains to be seen but, certainly, there appears to be a flicker of life in these presumed-dead plans.