Trump International Golf Links opened in 2012 on a 1,400-acre stretch of coastal dunes north of Aberdeen. The course was designed by Martin Hawtree on what is, geologically, one of the largest active dune systems in the UK — a Site of Special Scientific Interest until that designation was removed in 2020 amid years of well-documented controversy. The history matters; the sand at Menie matters; and the political-environmental context surrounding the course has shaped the course's reception more than the architecture has.
Setting the controversy aside as far as is reasonable, the architecture itself is dramatic. Hawtree was given a budget and a site that allowed for visual scale most architects never get — fairways carved through 80-foot dunes, greens perched on natural plateaus, holes that play directly along the North Sea cliff edge. It is closer to Bandon Dunes or Cabot Cliffs in feel than to a traditional Scottish links: more spectacle, less subtlety, and the result is a round most players will remember for a long time.
Visitor green fee is £225–£295 in 2026 — the highest on the Aberdeen coast. The MacLeod Course, the second 18 on the property (named after the proprietor's mother, originally from the Isle of Lewis), opened in 2025 and is a different proposition: shorter, more strategic, less imposing. Visitors can play either course; many play both. The on-site MacLeod House Hotel is the closest accommodation. Forty minutes from Aberdeen Airport.
The debate about Trump International tends to reduce to two irreconcilable positions: the development was an ecological mistake that destroyed a nationally significant habitat, or the course is spectacular and deserves to be judged on its golfing merits. Both positions have evidence. The SSSI designation that covered the Menie dunes was removed; the dunes themselves are as large and dramatic as ever; the course that was built through them uses the terrain more spectacularly than most architects are given the opportunity to. Visitors who separate the political from the architectural will find a round of real quality. Those who cannot do so will find the context impossible to set aside.