NEW LINKS DEVELOPMENT: Paul Gallaghertravelled to Machrihanish in Scotland, one of the great outposts in world golf, to see what two Irish businessmen have planned to open in September

SENSIBLE FOOTWEAR, clubs placed in the hold and the promise of a dram on the return journey as we strapped ourselves into the racing car-style seats is not your typical preparation for a round of golf. But then again, the Kintyre Express was departing Troon Harbour at first light to bring this particular group of intrepid golfers to the unique surrounds of "accessible isolation" at Machrihanish, one of the great outposts in world golf.

Golf has been played at Machrihanish since 1871, five years before the original club was founded. But it wasn't until 1879, when Old Tom Morris made the trip from St Andrews and went to work on this wonderfully rugged duneland, that one of the most natural and lasting links courses anywhere in the world was created.

Almost 130 years later Machrihanish, in the remote surrounds of the Kintrye Peninsula off the west coast of Scotland, will present another unique links masterpiece to the world when the neighbouring Machrihanish Dunes opens for business in September.

Campbeltown, the principal town on Kintyre, is recognised as the most isolated town in Britain and is situated in a southerly point of the peninsula, which is no more than 11 miles at its widest point.

To say there is one road in and one road out isn't in any way an exaggeration. It's little wonder this small corner of Scotland inspired Paul McCartney to pen his famous Mull of Kintyre song. The former Beatle still owns a considerable amount of farmland on the peninsula.

Although Campbeltown is little over 20 miles from Ballycastle on the Antrim coast, and less than 50 miles west of Glasgow as the crow flies, the 150-mile hairpin trip by road takes in the region of three hours.

So, why anyone in their right mind would consider building a second course in such isolated surrounds appears to defy logic, if only from an economic and business viewpoint.

And all this before revealing the land considered for building the new course was SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) in its entirety - generally a complete no, no for development of any kind, let alone a £30 million golf project.

But such hurdles were not going to defeat two successful Irish businessmen, and in particular one Brian Keating, whose origins trace back to his days growing up in the equally rugged surrounds of Swinford in Mayo. Keating made his fortune heading up multinational software companies such as Alcatel, Oracle and Compaq. It was while working at Compaq he met fellow Irishman Pierce Flynn, who is now a silent partner in the Machrihanish Dunes project.

"This is my first golf development project and I've certainly thrown myself in at the deep end," says Keating. "To be fair, I knew I'd stumbled across an interesting piece of land at Machrihanish, I just didn't realise it was SSSI and didn't really know what that meant until I had fully committed to the project.

"It is the highest protection the UK gives to environmental land, the highest protection you can get. To most people in the golf industry it's a no-go area for development whatsoever."

The Machrihanish Dunes site was rated SSSI because of the seven rare species of orchid, two of which can't be found anywhere else in Scotland. Typical protection for skylarks and other such coastal birds, plus the general fragility of the dunes also had to be considered.

For such a shrewd business mind, Keating had dipped his toe - more like slam-dunked - into the high-risk business of golf development for the first time with land he didn't even know was possible to build a golf course on and without a course designer.

After scouring the recognised lists of top 100 courses in the world, the Mayo native quickly realised over one-third were links courses.

"I went through the list and crossed off all the dead architects responsible for links courses in the top 100 and drew up a shortlist of five names," explains Keating. "I was looking for the guys who built great links courses in modern times, so I came up with the names of Pete Dye, Pat Ruddy, Kyle Phillips, Tom Doak and David McLay Kidd."

Originally Phillips was asked to carry out the design work, but that was before Kidd muscled his way in. Kidd is a no-nonsense Scot with a lifelong affinity to Machrihanish and golf in his blood. His father has for many years been the head greenkeeper at Gleneagles, while David came to prominence for his creation at Bandon Dunes in Oregon in the late 1990s.

He is also the designer of the new Castle Course at St Andrews, due to open later this year.

"My father has a long association with Machrihanish and my grandparents before that," explains Kidd. "They used to take the steamer from the Clyde in Glasgow to Campbeltown, and as a kid we used to stay in a caravan just above the old golf course."

Kidd had designs on creating "something special" at Machrihanish in his own right. After a round at Machrihanish in 2003, he and his friend Jim Haley - the lead shaper at Bandon Dunes - decided over a few beers to explore the possibility of a second course.

"We didn't think we needed a developer for this one, £200,000 would have got things started with a bit of borrowing. I'm the designer, he's (Haley) the shaper, we thought we were halfway there," says Kidd.

"We made a little deal with each other, found a local lawyer, but we hadn't been very quiet about it because we were such novice developers. In fact we were complete amateurs!

"Anyway, this stirred up a lot of interest and people like Brian (Keating) appeared on the scene and had hired Kyle Phillips, then I was completely screwed. Once I got over the disappointment and realised I didn't want to be a developer anyway, just the designer, I had to find Brian and convince him I was the right man for the job.

"I gave Brian all my reasons for using me, not to mention the affinity I have with the place and what a wonderful job I would do on this rare landscape. Eventually I managed to convince him, and that's when the real hard work started.

"This is the only course in the UK which is completely SSSI, it is unique," explains Kidd. (Donald Trump ran into major problems with his grand plans on a SSSI site in Aberdeenshire). "Initially we had to persuade the Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), who is the guardian of these fragile landscapes. Our aim was to create a course of the ilk that hasn't been seen in over 100 years. This was going to completely different to anything from modern day."

To Keating's credit, he kept his brief just that - brief - and left it to the experts. "Other than requesting a number of holes to be on the coastline, my brief was fairly skinny to David because you don't hire Michelangelo then tell him how to paint."

But even for Kidd, Machrihanish Dunes took some considerable thinking outside the box. Given the restrictions placed by the SNH it was like building a course with shackles on.

"We tried to explain to SNH what links golf was 100 years ago, a vision Old Tom might have had, and paint the picture that we could do this with almost no impact to the landscape. In concept they agreed, but getting down to the nuts and bolts of it took years of pre-build analysis and collaboration. Every single detail was accounted for.

"The design of Machrihanish Dunes was driven, firstly, by environmental concerns and secondly by golf course design. We weren't able to say 'look, the greens should go here or the bunkers there'. It was a case of, where could the green go? We then got choices and picked locations.

"That was a challenge in itself. The design on the ground probably took three years of planning, while the actual construction was little over five months. Even at that, there was no earth-moving equipment. To say we built tees and greens is a stretch. Basically all we did was strip the existing macher (naked grassland), made little contour adjustments, flatten out areas for tees and opened contours to greens," added the designer, who found 23 holes in all and only used approximately 20 acres of the 282-acre site.

"Our intention was to create a golf course where you simply play across the landscape, just like Old Tom would have done a 100 years ago. In fact the methods were similar too for there was a lot of labour," adds Kidd, a true traditionalist of the game who believes too many architects these days attempt to turn golf course design into a feat of engineering.

And does he think the second course at Machrihanish can work? "It will work just fine so long as people come with an open mind. If they come expecting a pristine Augusta-like golf course and get pissed off with seeing a few brown spots on the fairways, they've come to the wrong place," was his emphatic response.

"David has gone right back to his roots, to what he believes the original game was all about - which is as rough as a badger's backside, truth be told," quipped Keating.

The developers also engineered something of a coup by enticing Euan Grant from St Andrews. Grant was head greenkeeper for the Old Course and has brought some of his team with him to Machrihanish.

Getting through the environmental minefield of simply building the course was only the beginning of Keating's challenge, for he also has to work a way of getting people to the area without inundating it at the same time.

Through Keating's company, Brightside Leisure Development Ltd, the developers bought two hotels, the Royal Hotel adjacent to the harbour and marina in the heart of Campbeltown, and the old Ugudale Hotel - to be renamed the Kintyre Hotel - opposite the first tee at Machrihanish, overlooking one of the most famous opening holes in golf. Work on the first phase of 32 two-bedroom cottages at the Kintyre Hotel site has started.

"We could have ended up building a 200-bedroom hotel near Machrihanish Dunes and it would have lay empty half the year. We'd also have ended up as hoteliers and I didn't want that either," explains Keating.

"Instead we will have two boutique-style hotels and cottages with a freehold option where the first eight cottage owners get free golf at the new course in perpetuity."

In aiming to attract more golfers all year round, Keating also had to think about greater access to the Kintyre region. "We're already talking to Loganair and the Scottish minister for tourism about opening the area up a little bit," says Keating, who will trial the current Derry to Glasgow flight stopping in Machrihanish Mondays and Fridays from September. They are also looking into Loganair/British Airways opening a flight from Prestwick to Machrihanish.

Our method of transport on the 12-seater Kintyre Express was surely one of the most enjoyable ways of accessing Machrihanish. Former merchant navy and RNLI crewman Wilson Smith is skipper of the Rib, along with his son Robin. The hour's journey from Troon to Campbeltown offered panoramic views of Arran along the way. They also run specialised trips to all the islands for whiskey (indeed, whisky) tasting or special charters to and from Ballycastle and Bangor in Northern Ireland.

"It's all about providing access and getting people to stay over without changing the nature of the place," adds Keating. "Machrihanish has often been considered one the great outposts of world golf. I now like to think of it as accessible isolation."

With the centenary anniversary last week of Old Tom Morris' passing we were fortunate to play one his earliest and finest creations at Machrihanish before walking its new prospective neighbour in Machrihanish Dunes. All that was left to do was get strapped back into the Kintyre Express and warm the insides with a smooth Argyll malt presented in an authentic Scottish quaich by our skipper.