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gWest is a completed but unopened 18-hole golf course near Auchterarder and Gleneagles in Perth and Kinross. The course was designed by David McLay Kidd for the Al Tajir family's proposed gWest resort and residential development. Construction took place in 2008-09 and the golf course was completed in 2009, but the wider resort project stalled and the course has never entered normal operation.
The site is a natural rolling heathland property in the Ochil Hills area. Contemporary project material described USGA-specification greens, extensive fine turf and significant heather translocation and regeneration work. Despite plans at different times for openings, housing, a clubhouse, hotel and associated resort amenities, later reporting continued to describe gWest as unopened.
The course is an 18-hole heathland golf course. The course was designed by David McLay Kidd. On-site facilities include Social Membership, Restricted Membership.
The gWest project was conceived by the Al Tajir family as a major golf, hotel and residential development on land near Blackford, a few miles from Gleneagles. David McLay Kidd was commissioned to design its championship golf course after work including Bandon Dunes and the Castle Course at St Andrews.
Kidd regarded the Blackford land as an exceptional inland golf site. The course was laid across natural rolling heathland, with USGA greens and extensive fine-turf areas. Project greenkeeping material also records translocation and regeneration of mature heather as part of the intended course character.
The course was constructed in 2008 and 2009 and was effectively complete by 2009. The broader project envisaged high-end housing, a hotel, clubhouse and other resort facilities. Opening dates were repeatedly contemplated, including a planned 2014 opening, but the wider development stalled amid economic and political uncertainty.
Subsequent efforts to revive the project also failed to bring the course into operation.
The unusual status of a high-profile David McLay Kidd course sitting completed but unused has led golf publications to describe gWest as one of the modern mysteries of Scottish golf and as a 'ghost course'.
Recent reporting continues to describe the course as completed but unopened rather than as an operating golf facility.
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