SCOTLAND Trump reveals his master plan

Last month, nearly five years after he started searching the northeastern coast of Scotland for a place to build his piece de resistance, Donald Trump unveiled the master plan for what will eventually become Trump International Golf Links Scotland.

The centerpiece of the 1,400-acre resort community, to take shape at the Menie Estate in Aberdeen, will be a 7,400-yard, Martin Hawtree-designed golf course that Trump hopes will one day host the British Open.

If you're wondering, the course won't just be good. It'll be great.

"When people look back, in years to come," Trump told the Aberdeen Evening Press, "they are going to be proud of what will be, without doubt, the best golf course in the world."

In other words, the first course at Trump International Golf Links Scotland will be better than the Old course at St. Andrews, better than Royal Dornoch, better than the Old course at Royal Troon, better than Muirfield. It'll also be better than Castle Stuart and Kingsbarns, if you want to compare it with contemporary links.

And those are only some of the best courses in Scotland.

Trump expects to break ground on the course this summer -- it'll be built by SOL Golf Course Construction, an Irish firm -- and he expects to open it in 2012. He told the Aberdeen Press & Journal that he "had an input into all the holes" -- just as he's done with his courses in the United States -- and that "they are all going to be hard."

Hawtree, a third-generation designer who specializes in creating links-style tracks, told the Press & Journal that "the layout as conceived would contain no weak holes" and that "it will produce simply the most dramatic, stimulating stretch of golf anywhere I have seen."

Besides the golf course, Trump's community will include 500 single-family houses, 950 "holiday" houses, a hotel, a village center, and, eventually, a second 18-hole golf course.

Trump apparently couldn't resist teasing the reporters on hand with a suggestion that he might -- he might -- want to build other golf courses in Scotland once his current project is "well under way."

"Scotland is a great place," he said to the Press & Journal. "Something else could happen for us in Scotland."

One other piece of news from the unveiling: In the future, Trump plans to spend plenty of time in Scotland.

"Once this is built," he said, "I will be there a lot."

Consider it a fair warning.