Fʀᴀsᴇʀʙᴜʀɢʜ GC

The seventh oldest golf club in the world is rather good.

The clubhouse and opening hole wouldn’t necessarily give you that impression, but it gets better as you play up Corbie Hill on the Second. The view across the links from the Third tee is spectacular, and the holes that follow make for some very enjoyable and testing golf.

It’s on the Thirteenth tee that the links steps it up a level. From a course that felt like a distant cousin of Gullane, it suddenly felt a closer relative to the front 9 at nearby Royal Aberdeen. It’s hard to offer a higher compliment than that.

Thirteen has a splendidly quirky green defence - one to make even Mrs Grainger blush… A pair of six foot sand mounds guard the front edge - making it either blind, or a launchpad to throw your ball through the back of the green, or the back left bunker, if half a club short.

From here, the course weaves its way through towering sand dunes. Fifteen and Sixteen in particularly play through spectacular valleys, and Fourteen and Seventeen and charming par 3s.

One and Eighteen are the only real negative, they’re nothing more than functional. Alongside the road, they take us out and back to Corbie Hill and the amazing dune land beyond. Fraserburgh isn’t a wealthy club. It’s incredible value to play as a visitor, and I hope more will add it to the itinerary of an Aberdeenshire trip.

Some of the best land is adjacent to those two dull holes. Perhaps, in time, we might be rewarded by being able to play golf over it.