Loch Lomond and the Scottish Open: What Actually Happened
Loch Lomond Golf Club sits on the western shore of the loch at Luss, in Argyll and Bute, roughly forty minutes north of Glasgow. For fifteen years it was one of the best-known addresses in European golf. Then it stopped being one, almost overnight. The story is more interesting than the highlight reel suggests, and several parts of it are routinely told wrong.
Rossdhu Came First, by About Five Hundred Years
The land belonged to Clan Colquhoun. A medieval castle was built at Rossdhu by Sir John Colquhoun in 1457, along with the private chapel of St Mary of Rossdhu, when the family lands were consolidated into the free Barony of Luss. Mary, Queen of Scots visited in 1563, and the household record for 17 July lists a fish supper of salmon, ling and trout cooked in butter. That is the sort of detail that survives when almost everything else does not.
The castle was later ruined by fire, and the remains still stand behind what is now the eighteenth green. The house that replaced it is the clubhouse: Rossdhu Mansion, its central block completed in 1773 for Sir James Colquhoun, a Georgian manor probably designed by John Baxter, though no documentation survives to confirm it. Sir Ivar Colquhoun, the 8th Baronet, lived there until the late 1970s, and original furniture and artwork were loaned back to the restored house in 1994. The name is from the Gaelic ros dubh, meaning the black headland.
Weiskopf, Morrish and a Parkland Course in Links Country
Tom Weiskopf, the 1973 Open champion, designed the course with his long-standing partner Jay Morrish, and it opened in 1993. Weiskopf called it his lasting memorial to golf. It is a parkland course in the fullest sense: burns, marsh, mature woodland, the loch on one flank and hills on the other, running to a little over 7,100 yards at a par of 71.
That parkland character is not a stylistic footnote. It is the reason the tournament eventually left.
There Were Two Scottish Opens in 1996
This is the part that gets flattened in almost every summary. The Scottish Open of the late 1980s and early 1990s was played at Gleneagles, then at Carnoustie in 1995 and again in July 1996. Separately, in September 1996, a new invitational event began at Loch Lomond: the Loch Lomond World Invitational. From 1997 it took the pre-Open slot on the European Tour schedule.
Those Loch Lomond events did not use the Scottish Open name, because the rights to it were held elsewhere. Only from 2001 was the Loch Lomond tournament designated the Scottish Open, and at the same time every earlier edition, including the September 1996 one, was granted Scottish Open status retrospectively. The result is a real anomaly in the record books: two events in 1996 now both count as Scottish Opens, won by different players, on different courses, in different months.
So the common line that Loch Lomond hosted the Scottish Open from 1996 to 2010 is accurate as the record now stands, but it was not true at the time. Worth knowing before you argue about it in a clubhouse.
Fifteen Years of Champions
The full run at Loch Lomond, counting the retrospectively recognised editions:
- 1996 Thomas Bjorn, 1997 Tom Lehman, 1998 Lee Westwood, 1999 Colin Montgomerie, 2000 Ernie Els
- 2001 Retief Goosen, 2002 Eduardo Romero, 2003 Ernie Els, 2004 Thomas Levet, 2005 Tim Clark
- 2006 Johan Edfors, 2007 Gregory Havret, 2008 Graeme McDowell, 2009 Martin Kaymer, 2010 Edoardo Molinari
Els is the only two-time winner on that list. Havret took the 2007 title in a play-off against Phil Mickelson. Goosen won wire to wire in 2001 by three shots from Bjorn.
Why It Ended
Two reasons, and they are usually collapsed into one. The first was sporting: the Scottish Open occupies the week before The Open, and The Open is played on links. Sending the field to a lush inland course the week before a links major was seen as putting European Tour players at a disadvantage against rivals who spent that week practising on links courses instead. The second was financial. The tournament moved to Castle Stuart Golf Links near Inverness in 2011, and the club's own financial difficulties are cited alongside the links argument in contemporary accounts.
Castle Stuart held the event in 2011, 2012, 2013 and again in 2016. It was acquired by Cabot in 2022 and now trades as Cabot Highlands. The 2011 championship, incidentally, was cut to 54 holes after heavy rain caused flooding and landslides, which is one way to make a point about the difference between parkland and links.
The Part Nobody Advertises
Be clear about this before you plan anything. Loch Lomond is invitation only. There is no public tee sheet, no visitor green fee, no booking window. The club states plainly that the opportunity to play the course is extended only to those invited by existing members or by the club itself. Reported first-time registration figures have run well into six figures.
That makes it an unusual entry in any travel guide, and we treat it as one. You can read the course, understand the routing, know the history and appreciate what Weiskopf built. What you cannot do is turn up and play it, and no guide that tells you otherwise is being straight with you.
The full Loch Lomond chapter, along with 33 other courses across Fife, East Lothian, Ayrshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire, the Highlands, Argyll and the Islands and Perthshire, is in The Great Golf Courses of Scotland, with five regional loops built around genuine driving routes rather than tidy map groupings.