A Golfer’s Bucket List of Scottish Golf Courses: Book Review

Colin Ramsay’s new book, A Golfer’s Bucket List of Scottish Golf Courses, provides golfers with superb information on Scottish golf and a chance to record personal experiences.

A Golfer’s Bucket List of Scottish Golf Courses: Book Review

Golfers are generally keen collectors.

We collect putters or drivers, shoes, caps, towels and ball markers.

These tangible records of our golfing life are valuable, but they often cause a clutter that begins to irk even the most patient of our nearest and dearest.

Eventually these trinkets are consigned to a cardboard box that becomes dusty and forgotten under the stairs.

Something all golfers collect that takes up a good deal less actual space are our memories and experiences –

A first hole-in-one, a perfectly straight drive down a pristine fairway, a best score, a holed putt to win a match on the final green.

But, just as old relics from golfing trips over the years might end up stowed away and forgotten, so too our memories fade…

“Where was it I hit the pin on that par-3?” … “Which course did I play with the wall in front of the green?” …

It’s a great shame for those golfing memories to disperse into the ether and preventing that from happening is one of the key aims of Colin Ramsay’s excellent new book – “A Golfer’s bucket list of Scottish Golf Courses.”

Within its pages, Colin – a passionate golfer ever since joining Lochend Golf Club at Craigentinny Golf Course in Edinburgh as a junior member in 1971 – provides information on every course currently available to play across Scotland.

Details include locations, yardages, green fees, websites and contact information.

Not only that though, each course entry provides space in which to record the details of personal experiences of visiting and playing –

The date you played, who you played with, what you scored and then a small but ample space to jot down your “memorable moments.”

The idea is to encourage golfers to explore the great tracks across the country, to collect new tracks like a mountaineer might collect Scottish Munros.

And then to have a tangible (but certainly not dusty box worthy) record of those golfing expeditions, achievements, milestones and, inevitably, the odd disappointment along the way.

It’s a tremendous way to keep documentation of personal golfing experiences in Scotland.

But this is far more than just a logbook.

There are excellent Forewords by Scottish professional and renowned after-dinner speaker Alan Tait and the sports psychologist Karl Morris.

Colin’s thoughts on his favourite golfing venues in Scotland and on golf in general are interspersed between the sections (covering the different regions of Scotland) together with snippets on golf’s history, golfing fitness and the like.

A selection of attractive course photographs and some stylish maps add to the aesthetics of the book and, overall, is an extremely useful and attractive reference for those wishing to expand, and record, their playing experiences across the country that is the home of golf.

Colin Ramsay’s A Golfer’s Bucket List of Scottish Golf Courses is priced at £24.99 and is available at Amazon, Waterstones and some 70 other online stores worldwide