Leisure will be at the “heart” of the Heartlands project with new sports facilities being planned. Central to the ambitions of scheme will be the new golf resort, planned to open in 2010. The golf courses are being designed as a memorial to one of the most revered golf course architects of all time, Donald Ross, designer of among others, Pinehurst No2, site of the 2005 U.S. Open and Oakland Hills Country Club where the 2004 Ryder Cup was held. The PGA of Great Britain & Ireland’s associate company, PGA Design Consulting (PGADC), is designing the golf complex to include 36 holes, driving range, practice areas and state of the art clubhouse. The PGADC, who apart from doing course design in the UK, plan courses all around the globe including the rapidly expanding economies of China, Korea & India. Whitburn can now be added to that heavyweight list.

In designing the courses an early task was to study the legend that is Donald Ross and interpret his designs within today’s needs. Close co-operation was established with The Donald Ross Society in the United States to collect as much information and guidance as possible. This was successfully achieved and the PGADC designers have produced a plan that meets the design brief, not only to create a memorial to Donald Ross’s unique style, but also suitable for the landscape of the site and, most importantly, its market – the golfer of any standard who seeks a fair challenge but leaves the last hole wanting to return again and again. Donald Ross defined his philosophy as (in his own words)

• Make each hole present a different problem

• Arrange it that every stroke must be made with the full concentration and attention necessary to good golf.

• Build each hole in such a manner that it wastes none of the ground at my disposal and takes advantage of every possibility that I can see.

To read more about Donald Ross, Click here.

The Design

The West Course has been designed to be open to the elements to give it a “links” feel that will test the Tour Professional, as it is hoped to attract Tour Events to the course. The East Course will feature forestry to make it more of a parkland course and is very much in keeping with the local surroundings. Indeed, trees such as Birch and Scots Pine have been reclaimed from around the site of the mine works, transplanted to a purpose build nursery and are now being placed on the courses as they are being constructed. The image to the right shows a Norwegian Golf Course designed by the PGADC and gives very good idea as how the East course will look. Both courses are a shade under 7000 yards in length and have cleverly designed tee complexes to allow for a range of lengths and strategies for all golfers, scratch or high handicapper. The courses are being built to the highest international standards including the USGA (United States Golf Association) which will ensure proper drainage and allow maximum play throughout the year. Golf carts (buggies) can be used and cart paths will meander unobtrusively around the courses in common with worldwide resorts. Full practice facilities will be available including a state of the art floodlit golf driving range which in the future could be the base for the proposed Golf Academy.

The Clubhouse and Country Club will provide the full range of facilities sought by today’s golfer and family from a five star, 150 bedroom luxury hotel with bar and restaurant, a shop and club fitting rooms for the team of PGA professionals to full gymnasium and swimming pool etc.

Details yet to be finalised include the establishment of a Members Club which will hopefully not only attract the new estate’s house owners but the local community in and around Whitburn. The Memorial Golf Club will be seen as a leading golf venue in Scotland and will welcome visitors from all over the world to test their golfing skills against the two courses.

The construction of the Donald Ross Memorial Golf Courses has already attracted the attention of the media with articles appearing in The Scotsman, Pro Shop Europe magazine (Europe's leading golf trade publication) and Golf Course Architecture (the quarterly journal of golf course design and modification). Clips have appeared on BBC Scotland News and The Beechgrove Garden spent a day filming around the Heartlands development and on the golf courses. These articles focused on the recycling aspect of the golf courses but no doubt as construction continues more articles will appear discussing the merits of the design, layout, playability etc in particular in reference to the Donald Ross ethos of course design. During the Autumn (Fall) of 2007, Bradley S Klein the noted golfing author, columnist for Golfweek magazine and renowned authority on Donald Ross paid a visit to the Heartlands project to look at the course construction. Even though he is no longer a member of the Donald Ross Memorial Society having been on the board of directors from 2000 to 2004 he was asked to consult on the design integrity of the courses being built in Whitburn and evaluating therm for their golf-architecture qualities.

A short interview was conducted with him (by e-mail by the webmaster) on his return to the United States

What are your impressions of the courses being built here in Whitburn i.e. the plans, what has been created so far and so on?
"It's an ambitious undertaking, one that will not only honour an unheralded Scottish native but also create a very good pair of golf courses that will stand on their own merits as playable, enjoyable and scenic. The scale of the project is amazing -- overwhelming in fact. But the success I've seen so far is due to meticulous technical care and careful attention to getting the big regrading plans to match the more subtle final shapes of the golf course."

Do the plans etc fit in with the Donald Ross course design philosophy?
" I saw about five holes on the West Course. What's there is a very good start, with lots of interesting undulation and natural-looking contours and true to the kind of shapes that Ross was able to create."

Once built, do you think that the courses will get good coverage in the USA where the Donald Ross name is well known?
" The project will draw a lot of attention. Again, it will do so on its own merits, as a unique land reclamation project. But also because of the ancestral and heritage link to Ross."

I don't know how much you saw, but what did you think of Whitburn and the area in general?
" I saw a small, older town, and then I saw this ambitious, expansive project in. I can only judge the land plan for the new Whitburn community, which seems to me to be extremely well-thought out as an exemplar of new-urbanism or new-suburbanism"

Although he has no plans to discuss his visit in any publication or website at the moment he did indicate that he would do so in the future, by which time more of the courses will have been built. Overall he gave the Doanld Ross Memorial Courses a thumbs up. Bradley S Klein is the author of "Discovering Donald Ross," 2001, winner of the USGA International Book Award.

Building the courses

 

Work on the Donald Ross Memorial Golf Courses is gathering pace. The land is now looking like a golf course rather than an excavation site which was the case in the past. Golf course construction is confined to the west course as this is unaffected by the open cast work but once the contractors complete their mining, reclamation and restoration in 2008 work will begin on the east courses and the remainder of the west course. Holes 2 through to 7 are at advanced stages, the shaping, fairways and tee areas and will be finished to completion late in 2008. The drainage systems have been put in place and the golf course contractors are layering the various components which make up a world class golf course. As has been stated elsewhere within this website, Ecosse Regeneration Ltd are championing the use of recycled materials in just about every part of the golf course construction. In the first project of its kind in Scotland the golf courses are being built with a new technique that combines screened colliery waste shale with high-quality compost avoiding the traditional method of importing tonnes of new topsoil and slashing the cost of regenerating the land. Inert colliery waste has been crushed and graded and is being used as the base for the fairways. Crushing and grading of the colliery waste has been going on for a couple of years now, each batch being thoroughly laboratory tested to ensure that it will be a suitable medium for use on the golf courses. It has proven to be ideal as it has excellent percolation properties i.e. it drains well. This is a new science in the world of golf course construction and Ecosse Regeneration Ltd, here in Whitburn are leading the way. The organic green compost layered on top of the recycled colliery waste is locally produced, made from tree and shrub prunings and grass trimmings as well as other biodegradable materials. This type of compost improves soil and root fertility resulting in lush growths of grass. This combination of compost and screened colliery waste provides an excellent balance of water and nutrient retention properties and will also be sufficiently free-draining to ensure that the golf courses remain playable under the wettest of conditions, which is most important given the local climate. Young trees which were growing around the site have been carefully nurtured in a nursery and are now being replanted around the golf courses as are be mature tree which were uplifted from the site of the new motorway junction. Again they are being looked after in a nursery. Rocks and boulders dug up during the open cast work are being used as landscaping features around the courses so just about everything is being reused. This is recycling at its very best.

The following gallery shows the golf courses at various stages of construction (earliest at top)

Please note that this section is being re-coded .

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