By John Turnbull - Bunkered
How much are you looking forward to the end result?
We’re thrilled and really grateful. This has been a three-year journey just on permitting this site and a 15–20-year journey at Mach Dunes with local partners, the environmental partners and it’s been a labour of love for us.
Just incredibly excited, the first time we went to Kintyre we fell in love with it and realised the magic there, so we’ve been trying to share that with the world ever since.
Machrihanish Dunes might be one of Scotland’s best, but it’s about to get even better.
The Campbeltown venue, hailed as one of the most unique on the planet, has been given the green light to undergo a major expansion project in 2025.
At the heart of plans is a new 18-hole championship golf course, that is hoped to transform the Kintyre Peninsula into ‘the next great golf destination’.
That’s how Tommy Southworth, president of Southworth – which owns, develops and manages Machrihanish Dunes – feels, so we caught up with him to find out what’s around the corner…
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Tommy, how excited are you about the project?
Well, we’re beyond excited. This is the evolution of the project and interest and tourism to this area that we’ve been excited about for a long time.
There is truly nowhere else like it in the world, it is so unique the way we have bult it. We weren’t able to move dirt, it’s mostly been by hand to build tees and greens.
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Do you have a timeline for planning and creation?
Yeah, we haven’t been shy about this; we’re looking to bring in a partner. We want to stay involved in Machrihanish forever, because we’re a buy and hold organisation. We’ve been having conversations over the past five years, so the permit was a key part of that process.
The timeline is dependent on that, but we are hoping to break ground by the end of next year and start of 2026. How we phase it and what comes first, we’re unsure, but golf is the key piece of the puzzle in adding a third golf course, which we consider is the real driver of growth and interest in the area.
How will it differ from the original course at Mach Dunes?
We’ve worked hard to make sure our plans protect the most sensitive areas and to set up that land to flourish for generations to come.
We are thrilled about the course and have worked closely with Nature Scotland and SSSI (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) to permit seven holes of golf in the raw dunes, in the linksland which will be otherworldly.
The links get even more dramatic the more you go north along Machrihanish Bay, and we’ve been looking over the fence at these dunes for years, just dreaming of the incredible golf that we could route through there.
Those seven holes will have a similar ethos and vibe to Mach Dunes, and we’re excited about that.
How important is it to maintain those sustainable building practices?
It’s critical. It has informed everything about how we built Mach Dunes and how these holes in the SSSI site will be constructed and maintained.
I wish we could credit some of those folks for the design because it is in partnership with them and is something people have viewed as a negative, the fact there might be a long walk from green to tee, a lot of blind shots, some incredibly good or bad bounces but that’s the way the land lies.
That’s the way this course will be, folk can sit in their armchairs and call it a negative, but I think it’s wildly positive and fundamentally the way golf was played for hundreds of years before modern practices were brought in.
We couldn’t do this any other way, that’s our responsibility as stewards of this site. That’s how we got the permit, because we have a 15-year history of doing exactly this at Mach Dunes and all the things our partners at Nature Scot care about have succeeded.
Do you have prospects of hosting championships?
Yeah, we’d love to. We can’t go into the SSSI land, put bleachers and hospitality tents up, but we’re okay with that and understand that.
However, the new course and the new routing would allow us to host a significant event if we switched the nines and finished on the existing farmland. And we have the opportunity to do composite routings to make a championship course with Mach Dunes.
It would certainly be a unique venue in the world of professional golf, and we’d love to see how that unfolds over the coming decades.
How much will it benefit Scottish golf?
Scottish golf is in a pretty good place and the game of golf worldwide is in a wonderful place. Interest in the game and Scottish golf has fueled these regions and powerhouses like St Andrews, Dornoch, Ayrshire, East Lothian.
These centers of Scottish golf are getting stronger each year and our desire is to add one to that. On your first trip to Scotland, you’ll probably go to St Andrews, and you should. It’s the Home of Golf and deserves its spot at the top of the list.
But on your next trip, come to Kintyre, because there is such incredible golf now on Isla and Jura that our goal is to tie that region together and make it an unmissable destination for trip two or three. We want to make sure it becomes a golf mecca that is up there with the rest.
Do other resorts give you inspiration?
People have cited Bandon as inspiration for this project and we’ve seen the market for golf destinations really flourish over the last ten or 15 years.
What’s been done at those resorts that’s made them so popular is that the focus is on the golf experience and that alone. The hotels aren’t five-star luxe hotels with big spas and pools and gyms, it’s about the golf.
That’s a model we think has legs and will continue to be popular and we think Machrihanish could be it. We want to also appeal a little more to the non-golfer than some of those resorts.
They’re nothing like Scottish golf, we want to be the next great golf destination in Scotland and that means the next great golf destination in the world.
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Can you talk us through some of the off-course plans?
Our current development includes two hotels that have 45 rooms across them and eight two-bedroom golf cottages, that are right across from the first tee at Machrihanish.
We operate an integrated resort, and this is an expansion of that. It’s a doubling down of what we have today, and a big expansion of the amenity set, so the clubhouse facilities would have extensive facilities and fitness, wellness and spa facilities, sports facilities.
There are so many other draws, and we love what Gleneagles has done by attracting the whole family and offering an incredible golf experience.
Is there a motivation behind creating the teaching facilities, too?
The practice facility planned would be unique in the UK market and capable of being a teaching facility that could draw incredible talent from the coaching and playing side.
We’ve seen this model work across the US, where golf resorts really focus on their teaching facilities and folks will go for a three-day trip just to work on their game.
How much are you looking forward to the end result?
We’re thrilled and really grateful. This has been a three-year journey just on permitting this site and a 15–20-year journey at Mach Dunes with local partners, the environmental partners and it’s been a labour of love for us.
Just incredibly excited, the first time we went to Kintyre we fell in love with it and realised the magic there, so we’ve been trying to share that with the world ever since.
