The present Muirkirk Golf Club began play on the Southside Course on Saturday May 11th 1991.The course was opened for play by Mr Lyndsey Stuart, the President of The Scottish Golf Union.After the opening ceremony an exhibition match was played on the course featuring Jack Cannon, a former Scottish Amateur Champion and David Gemmell, the golf professional at Belleisle Golf Club in Ayr.The course comprises of nine holes over an area which is part parkland and part moorland. The parkland area was originally the site of the Southside Miner’s Rows and the moorland area was used by Upper Wellwood Farm for sheep grazing.Both of these areas belonged to The National Coal Board (Scottish Coal) and were on a lease until 1994 when they were purchased at great cost by Muirkirk Golf Club for the princely sum of £1.00. The local councillor Jimmy Kelly was very instrumental in the negotiations for this purchase and the Golf Club members were extremely grateful for all his help. The First green with the former Kaimes Institute in the backgroundThe course is a nine hole course, and is fairly short in yardage compared with others. This does not make it in any way easy, due to the tightness of the fairways and with the boundary fences, bunkers and penalty areas which come into play on the majority of the holes it is quite testing.As the scorecard shows most games are played as 18 holes. Muirkirk Golf Club was formed in 1910 with a golf course at Auldhouseburn and until the outbreak of the second world war was a thriving place. During the war major parks of the course were ploughed up for the war effort. After the war was over attempts were made to make the course playable again but the new tenant in Auldhouseburn Farm was grazing cattle on the course so the greens had to be fenced off with stobs and wire to prevent damage to them.Eventually in 1956 the course closed.Muirkirk Golf Club was resurrected in 1972, albeit without a golf course, the intention being to hold outings to other courses and eventually getting ground to build our own.Ground for the present course was obtained and work started in earnest in 1977, but interest again fell away and it was not until the late 1980’s that we were able to begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel and so with a lot of effort from a small band of dedicated members who worked tirelessly to make it happen, and with grants from varies bodies the Southside Golf Course was opened for play on Saturday May 11th 1991.
In 2010 we celebrated 100 years of golf in Muirkirk.