Duff House Royal Golf Club

Duff House Golf Club was formed in 1910 when the Duke of Fife gave over land on the banks of the River Deveron at Banff. Archie Simpson laid out the first course, and it opened with a match between J.H. Taylor and James Braid that Taylor won by three with a 75.

The holes went to agriculture during the First World War and the course declined. Alister MacKenzie and his brother, Major C.A. MacKenzie, redesigned the eighteen in 1923, and on 1 January 1925 the two Banff clubs amalgamated as Duff House Royal. It is a par 68 of 6,118 yards.

What it asks of you

The greens. MacKenzie built them large and two-tiered, and they are still there, which makes this one of the more legible surviving examples of what he did with putting surfaces before Augusta.

A par 68 on flat ground beside a river sounds gentle, and the card is not the difficulty. Being on the correct tier is. An approach that finishes twenty feet from the flag on the wrong level is a harder two putts than one from forty on the right level, and the course keeps asking that question.

The Deveron bounds the course and is in play on several holes. MacKenzie wrote when he first saw the ground from the Hill o’ Doune that he had rarely come across a piece of land that lent itself so well to an attractive course.

What players say about it

The club takes visitors and features in the Scottish rankings. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The MacKenzie greens are the feature everyone names, and they are unusual to find intact.
• The setting between Duff House and the River Deveron is repeatedly called one of the prettiest in the north east.
• Conditioning, and the greens in particular, are consistently well reported.
• It is affordable for a course with this design pedigree.
• Being flat, it is walkable for anyone.

What comes up against

• A par 68 of 6,118 yards is short, and it will not test a long hitter off the tee.
• The flat ground gives it less drama than the links up the coast.
• Banff is remote, and the course is reached on a north-east trip.
• Wind off the Moray Firth can turn a mild course into a hard one.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Banff on the Moray Firth coast, about fifty minutes from Aberdeen and an hour and a half from Aberdeen airport.

The season is year-round, but the parkland is firmest from May to September. Visitor tee times are booked in advance.

Green fees

Visitor rates are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, the club’s published history and encyclopaedic entries for the 1910 founding, Archie Simpson’s original layout, the Taylor and Braid opening match, the MacKenzie redesign of 1923 and the 1925 amalgamation, and public course records for par and yardage. The opinion section summarises public reviews read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.