For some, the 18-hole links on the northeast Aberdeenshire coast will symbolise the Republican candidate's adoration for the late Mary Anne MacLeod Trump's ancestral home and will be a driver of economic investment. Others say it will be a display of ostentation that will bring little benefit to a local area that already boasts numerous highly-ranked golf courses, including an existing Trump one. The course is being constructed at the Trump International Golf Links resort in Balmedie, just north of Aberdeen, where Trump opened a course in 2012 that sparked controversy over possible environmental damage.
The second layout is scheduled to welcome golfers from next summer and is part of wider plans at the resort to honour his mother who was born on the northwest Isle of Lewis in 1912. "The whole impetus for this development was Trump's abiding love for Scotland," Sarah Malone, executive vice president of Trump International Scotland, told AFP inside a baronial mansion on the resort's 1,400-acre (567-hectare) grounds. Outside, waves from the North Sea lap onto golden beaches as the autumn Scottish sun casts long shadows over greenkeepers laying turf on holes flanked by towering sand dunes dotted with spiky marram grass.
Trump International says the course will form "the greatest 36 holes in golf". Golf Digest magazine ranked the original course 34th in the world earlier this year. Four years ago, Scotland's natural heritage agency stripped the dunes on the resort of their status .
