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        Visit this center to learn about special golf features of HOME AT FIRST travel programs in Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Scandinavia, and New Zealand.
        See our extensive Course Guides for each country, keyed to Home At First's destination regions in each location.
      HOME AT FIRST also provides advance tee time bookings and pre-paid golf outings for many of the courses of Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, Scandinavia, and New Zealand as part of its travel packages.
        For more information visit these pages:
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Stirling Castle — perched securely on its formidable rock base — looms over
Stirling Golf Club on the plain below, formerly the hunting grounds of Scottish kings.
Photo courtesy Stirling Golf Club

Stirling Golf Club
Queen's Road
Stirling FK8 2QY
Scotland, UK
TEL: +44 (0) 1786 464 098
EMAIL: enquiries@stirlinggolfclub.com
WEB SITE: STIRLING GOLF CLUB

          James IV spoke at least seven languages, and maintained interests in literature, science, law, and medicine. He was Scotland’s Renaissance king. He brought mechanized printing to Scotland, and established universities in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews. James expanded Scotland’s navy, and brought all of Scotland — even the remote islands of the Hebrides — under the control of the Scottish Crown. To promote peace with England, he married Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII when he was 30 years old. Their granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots, was both Queen of Scotland and Queen of France, and mother of King James I of England, the namesake of Jamestown and the King James Bible.

KING JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND
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          During his reign King James IV improved and enlarged three royal castles where he maintained residences: Linlithgow Palace in Scotland’s Central Lowlands, Edinburgh Castle, and Stirling Castle in Central Scotland. It was while in residence at Stirling Castle that James IV made arguably his greatest contribution to Scottish — indeed to world — culture. On a mild winter’s day in 1506 the 33-year-old king joined a longtime friend, Patrick Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, in the expansive hunting grounds lying at the base of Stirling Castle. There they played the second game of golf ever played and recorded in Scotland.
          What wasn’t recorded was the score, or whether they played winter rules, or played two-shilling Nassau, or whether the king got any strokes or mulligans. After 502 years, however, what is remembered is the location: after half a millennium scarcely a more dramatic location for golf exists in all of Scotland, the Home of Golf.

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
PORTRAYED AT THE AGE
WHEN SHE BORE A ROYAL
SON, LOST HER SECOND HUSBAND TO MURDER,
AND PLAYED A FAMOUS
 ROUND OF GOLF.

THE LADIES' TEES: King James IV’s granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots, whose childhood home was Stirling Castle, became Scotland’s first recorded female golfer, when it was noted that in 1567 she played golf just a few days following the murder of her second husband, Lord Darnley, a murder in which she was implicated as a conspirator. The Queen’s game also took place in the winter, and she left her 9-month-old son — who in four months would be crowned King James VI of Scotland, and the eventual King James I of England — at home. Within three months Mary took a third husband, believed by many to be the actual murderer of Darnley. It was James Hepburn, the 4^th Earl of Bothwell, and great-grandson of the playing partner of King James IV.

WHAT'S YOUR HANDICAP? Early returns suggested that playing golf does not prolong ones life. Both King James IV and his friend the 1^st Earl of Bothwell were killed at the Battle of Flodden. James Hepburn, 4^th Earl of Bothwell, died at about 44 years of age in the dungeon of a Danish castle. And Mary Queen of Scots, after spending years in prison, was

executed at the age of 44 on the order of her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England. Oh those Tudors and Stewarts!

MODERN HISTORY: More than 350 years after James IV played his historic round in the King’s Hunting Park below Stirling Castle, the Stirling Golf Club formed in 1869. The course was laid out on what had been the King’s Park, just outside the walls of old Stirling town. Young Tom Morris, British Open Champion four times in a five-year stretch (1868-69-70 and 1872), and a charter member of golf’s pantheon, was brought in as the club’s first golf professional in 1869 at the age of 18, the year after he and his famous father, Old Tom Morris (also a four-time Open Champions and the greens keeper at the St. Andrews Old Course), finished one-two in the Open Championship at Prestwick. Unfortunately, the life of Young Tom Morris ended prematurely at the age of 24.
          Despite its position at the foot of the Stirling Castle escarpment, Stirling Golf Course is remarkably flat. At a little over 6,100 yards, the course is also fairly short for a regulation 18-hole, par-72 course with 4 par-5s and 4 par-3s. And,

YOUNG TOM MORRIS

In the divots of Kings, golfers have
been playing golf at the foot of
Stirling Castle since at least 1506.
Photo credit: A. D. S. MacPherson & Stirling Smith, courtesy Stirling Golf Club.

because the parkland course is not subject to the winds and open weather conditions of a Scotland seaside links, the course rarely plays long. However, the Stirling course is not without impediments. The great English golfer, Sir Henry Cotton, saw to that, when he gave Stirling Golf Club a complete course makeover in 1967, planting many deciduous trees that have since matured to define the fairways and add beauty to the course year round. The trees, lush fairways, and castle backdrop make Stirling G.C. an eye-pleasing layout even in overcast conditions. But, in fine weather expansive view looking towards the Trossachs mountains of Scotland’s Central Highlands makes Stirling’s handsome natural setting almost distracting.

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Want to learn about other courses throughout the British Isles
including some of the greatest tests of golf in the world? See our
SCOTLAND, IRELAND, ENGLAND, and WALES
Course Guides for more information.
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