Erskine Golf Club

Erskine opened on Saturday 12 March 1904 with an exhibition match between Willie Fernie of Troon and Ben Sayers of North Berwick. Fernie had laid out the original eighteen; the club was formally constituted at the end of that year.

Three architects have worked on it since. Alister MacKenzie redesigned the twelfth and thirteenth in 1920. James Braid reworked the course in 1937, adding bunkers and holes and reshaping greens. It is a par 71 of 6,381 yards from the back markers, and holes nine to sixteen run along the south bank of the River Clyde.

What it asks of you

Eight holes on a riverbank is the shape of the round. The Clyde is wide here, the ground beside it is open, and the wind coming up or down the estuary sets the difficulty of that whole stretch on any given day.

Braid’s 1937 work is what you play for the most part, and it does what Braid’s work usually does: the bunkers sit at the end of a good drive rather than a bad one, and the greens ask a specific approach rather than a general one. The two MacKenzie holes are worth knowing about before you reach them.

At 6,381 yards it is not long. The eight riverside holes decide the card.

What players say about it

The club takes visitors and is well covered in the Scottish course guides. 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 stretch along the Clyde is what everyone names, with the Erskine Bridge and the hills beyond it.
• Having Fernie, MacKenzie and Braid in one routing interests anyone who cares about design.
• Conditioning and greens are consistently well reported.
• It is good value for a course of this quality so close to Glasgow.
• The welcome to visitors comes up often.

What comes up against

• At 6,381 yards it will not stretch a long hitter.
• The riverside holes are exposed and can be brutal in wind.
• The inland holes are held to be less interesting than the eight by the water.
• Renfrewshire winters leave the parkland heavy.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Bishopton in Renfrewshire, on the south bank of the Clyde, twenty minutes west of Glasgow and fifteen from Glasgow airport.

The season is year-round, but May to September gives the firmest ground and the best chance of a manageable wind. 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 1904 opening, the Fernie layout, the MacKenzie holes of 1920 and Braid’s 1937 redesign, 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.