In recent years, a new hospitality brand called Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has quietly been making big waves in high-end golf travel. They have made visits to some of the world’s greatest destinations and most highly ranked courses easier, better and more luxurious. But they just took the biggest single step in the company’s history, announced yesterday.

Making Golf Travel Better

Marine & Lawn’s strategy has been novel yet elegantly simple. They acquire existing hotels—often the best hotel—in iconic pilgrimage golf destinations, then pump vast amounts of capital into renovations. Many of these would be better characterized as overhauls, reopening with far more luxurious lodging, dining, drinking and everything else you want in a luxury golf vacation. They started in the birthplace of the game, and golf’s most “Bucket List” destination, Scotland, before moving on to Northern Ireland, and now, the United States.

When I say the top destinations in golf, that is no exaggeration. While Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has just seven hotels in the British Isles, those all sit immediately at, or extremely close to, a Who’s Who of the world’s greatest courses. Close as in walking distance to the first tee close. As prolific golf journalist Shaun Tolson wrote in MasterCard Luxury Magazine, “proximity to world-class golf is at the nucleus of every Marine & Lawn hotel.” On the current 2024-2025 Golf Digest World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list, they have the top four spots, five of the top six, and six of top nine. That is no small thing.

For example, one of Marine & Lawn’s properties is Rusacks Hotel in St. Andrews, which literally abuts the oldest and most famous golf layout on earth, the Old Course, the first choice of just about everyone who plays if they could play one spot. I’ve been to St. Andrews several times, and while Rusacks has been there for more than 200 years and has always had an unbeatable location, it’s fair to say it has never been as good as it is now, taking its place among Scotland’s top golf course hotels. On Rusacks, Tolson noted that, “A through renovation put a modern spin on the property’s traditional Scottish style and was desperately needed.” Lodgings are more sumptuous than ever, the food is great, the below ground classic bar is fantastic, and they added a rooftop restaurant and bar, all the craze around the globe but even better when overlooking golf’s most hallowed ground. Greatly improved food and beverage has been a Marine & Lawn hallmark since day one.

Great Golf in Northern Ireland

This year’s 2025 Open Championship returns to Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush, the only place the British Open has ever been played outside Great Britain. When the dust settles from the event and traveling leisure golfers return, they will want to stay at Marine & Lawn’s Portrush Adelphi, a massively upgraded seaside property that instantly became the top choice in a golf mad destination that also includes nearby 36-hole Ballyliffin, with two stunning links layouts on the coast, the northernmost in Ireland.

Their portfolio also includes the venerable Slieve Donard, long the must-stay spot for golfers visiting Northern Ireland’s Royal County Down, by many estimates, the world’s greatest golf course period. It is Number One on Golf Digest’s list and having played it a couple of times, I understand why.

Great Golf in Scotland

On the other hand, many pundits would give that best-on-earth title to Muirfield, a sixteen-time host of the Open Championship and likely the only tee-time in Scotland harder to get than the Old Course. The classic spot to stay while playing Muirfield has always been Greywalls, an Edwardian estate overlooking the 10th tee, and yesterday Marine & Lawn announced the acquisition of that gem. Designed by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1901, it was privately owned by the Weaver family since 1926, and now Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts.

Through a close and longstanding relationship with The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, the club that calls Muirfield home, Greywalls has always had the rare luxury of securing a handful of allocated tee times so it can offer stay and play packages on this incredibly hard to access course. The announcement is so new that Marine & Lawn has not decided what if any renovations are needed beyond upgrading the culinary offerings, nor what changes will be made to its packages, but it is a good guess that their hotel will continue to have the distinction of being the place to stay for such special access to tee times.

Besides Rusacks and now Greywalls, they also have the Marine Hotel in Troon, a longtime classic and the place to stay when visiting British Open venue Royal Troon or nearby Prestwick, birthplace of the British Open Championship, one of the world’s most fun courses, and a personal favorite of mine. In 2022 when the hotel reopened, the London Times wrote: “Maximalist design and MasterChef-style food are on the menu at this revamped golf course hotel.”

Then there’s the Marine North Berwick, Scotland, surrounded by arguably the densest concentration of standout courses on earth, including two in the World Top 10. Further north, Dornoch Station is the top choice for those making the golf pilgrimage to remote Royal Dornoch—ranked Number Two in the World by Golf Digest.

Great Golf in the United States

Unlike U.S. golf resorts, at most of the top spots in the British Isles the courses are private clubs, even when open to the public, and the lodging is unaffiliated, so simply having a hotel next to a great course does not mean guests can get on it. However, in most of these cases, Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts has a very close working relationship with its neighbors, and while they typically do not guarantee tee times or offer the kind of turnkey golf and accommodations packages many U.S. resorts do, they can try, have an inside track, and are often your best bet.

The situation is a little bit different here at the company’s first domestic acquisition, and probably its most newsworthy. Along with Greywalls, Marine & Lawn just announced the purchase of twin resorts Pine Needles Lodge and Mid-Pines Inn in Southern Pines, NC, just outside Pinehurst, the “Home of Golf in America.”

These twin resorts were built in the 1920 and sit directly across the road from each other and have long been owned by the same family and operated as two sides of the same property, with guests sharing access to food, drink and the three golf courses. I visited recently, and the golf is simply exceptional, with three original Donald Ross gems that have been painstakingly restored in recent years, and all three are ranked in the Top 40 in the U.S. by Golf Magazine—something not even Pebble Beach can claim. The recently renovated Southern Pines Country Club was private for most of the past century, but since being upgraded and added to the resort portfolio, it has exploded onto the scene and is the only course in the region that stands toe to toe with legendary Number Two at Pinehurst, the area’s other “must play.” The other two are excellent as well, and Pine Needles hosted the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open.

Pine Needles and Mid-Pines have always had a cult following and serious players know how good the courses are. In addition, the resorts have a standout golf academy with a large, dedicated teaching facility. But the weak link has always been the average accommodations and limited cuisine, while sitting in the shadow of the massive Pinehurst Resort, the nation’s largest, which has received decades of continuous reinvestment, has tons of dining and myriad lodging options, and is by any standard, one of the world’s greatest golf destinations. But if anyone is going to give them a run for their money, it is Marine & Lawn, which has already announced plans for a much-needed comprehensive restoration led by parent company AJ Capital’s design team, featuring fully renovated guestrooms, new dining concepts, and refreshed public spaces. The resorts should remain open with renovations on a rolling basis, beginning this year with hopes for completion in 2026.

The family owner of Pine Needles and Mid-Pines did an excellent job with golf, and they are keeping that part of the operation, with Marine & Lawn buying the hotels, not the courses. Nonetheless, the close relationship will almost certainly continue in the form of easily booked preferential tee times for guests and stay and play packages, as has been the case until now. Both partners are very good at what they do, and my informed guess is that few guests will notice any separation and by all appearances, Mid-Pines and Pine Needles will continue to be one of the top golf resorts in the country, only better.

All of this is big travel news for golfers at some of the world’s best golf courses, here and in Europe. Or as Ben Weprin, founder of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts and CEO of AJ Capital Partners put it in his announcement, “These acquisitions represent a pivotal milestone for Marine & Lawn. Since launching the brand in 2019, our ambition has always been to honor golf’s most legendary locales with world-class hospitality. The addition of these iconic properties—each with deep roots in golf’s history—allows us to bring that vision to life on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Thursday, July 10, 2025