Trump's Scottish Extravaganza

Trump reps say they don't need holdout landowner Forbes -- who makes his stance plain. Photo: Ed Jones/Getty Images

Topographically, Hawtree says the course is "as interesting as any links I have seen. The dunes are huge, and the holes will be undulating in the style of Lahinch or Ballybunion, which is great. I know Trump does not want cart paths on his course. He wants it to be a traditional links that people can walk with a bag on their back."

Project director Neil Hobday, who claims to have searched all 6,200 miles of Scotland's coastline before finding this "ideal site," is another at pains to emphasize the "un-American" aspects of the project.

"We won't make things difficult by growing rough everywhere," Hobday says. "We will do it with the speed of the greens, which introduces all kinds of strategy from the tee, depending on where the wind is blowing and where the hole is cut on the green. We don't want people looking for balls on every hole. And we want them to be tempted into hitting shots they perhaps shouldn't play. That's part of the challenge of links golf."

All of which presupposes that the course actually will be built. While the odds are currently heavily in favor of the project gaining official approval, nothing yet is certain. Indeed, the story of Trump and the Menie Estate already has taken many twists and turns. As a "Site of Special Scientific Interest" that is home to many varieties of plant and wildlife, the area always was going to be difficult from a planning standpoint. American Mark Parsinen, who developed the highly acclaimed Kingsbarns course near St. Andrews, was one who previously rejected the site because of possible environmental restrictions. "I looked at this location, but it is on a Site of Special Scientific Interest," says Parsinen, who is now building another project at Castle Stuart, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. "These things take a lot of time. I settled here with my family to slowly build up relationships with the local community. I want them with me, not angry with me."

One man not willing to sit at Trump's table is Michael Forbes, a 55-year-old fisherman who has lived on 23 acres of land behind the sand dunes at Balmedie for 40 years. His home and the mobile home where his mother lives sit directly between the two proposed courses. According to the Guardian, the London Sunday Times and other publications, Forbes has received two official offers for his land, one for £350,000 and one for £375,000, both of which he turned down. Forbes has said he originally was not opposed to the golf course but has become soured by the courtship. "The farmer guy in the middle of it all is irrelevant, totally irrelevant," says Hobday. "The press made a great song and dance about him for a while, but we don't need him. Would we prefer to have his land? Yes. But he isn't needed."

Far more pressing from the Trump organization's point of view has been the political fallout from their interaction with government ministers. First McConnell was accused of abusing his position in dealings with Trump. And his successor as First Minister, Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has twice faced prolonged questioning from his fellow members of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh over meetings he held with Hobday and Trump's right-hand man, George Sorial, one day prior to the Scottish government "calling in" the course application. Salmond, whose Gordon constituency contains the site for the proposed course, claimed he was acting not as First Minister, but merely as the area's constituency representative.

Regardless, the "calling in" action of the national government, almost unprecedented in the planning process, was made by Finance Secretary John Swinney of the SNP as a result of the decision of the Aberdeenshire Council's Infrastructure Services Committee, which voted to reject the application, even though the council's Formartine Area Committee previously had approved planning permission for the development.