A few more years must yet elapse before we can properly test Donald Trump's claim that he has built the finest golf course in the world, though he has certainly built the most inclusive.

The Trump International Golf Links, just north of Aberdeen, on the anointed and golden Menie coastline, treats both sexes equally. That raises it beyond many of Scotland's other elite courses, where women must be kept on a leash and the committee last saw action at Balaclava. It even tolerates the bottom feeders in a sport that was born with a Trespassers Will Be Shot sign around its neck. At each of Trump International's holes there are six tee boxes ranging from "professional" to "barely ambulant".

A walk across the links is to encounter a landscape rendered ethereal by the huge dunes that loom above every hole. The 18th is a 630-yard behemoth where an unspoilt view of three miles of beach stretching back towards Aberdeen will soften the mood of those who will have suffered a pestilence of lost balls.

Trump, the billionaire American property developer is, very possibly, the only man God has created who does not possess the embarrassment gene. Whether it's making or losing fortunes on luxury developments that are the tartan trews of property constructions or calling for President Obama to show us his birth certificate, he is the embodiment of indomitable. When it was revealed last week that he was seeking planning permission for a second golf course, to the south of the current one, it seemed, on the face of it, that his dream of creating a sprawling millionaires' "Trumpland" resort would be fulfilled. Trump triumphant in fact.

At last, it seemed, the stated desire for a £1bn development with 500 houses and a luxury 450-room hotel providing anything up to 6,000 jobs would become a reality. In the three months or so following the course's grand opening last July, Trump's people said that more than 10,000 visitors flocked to it. "It was way beyond our most optimistic expectations," says Sarah Malone, the Links' executive vice-president.

Credit: Observer graphics

Martin Hawtree, the golf architect who designed the first course has been commissioned to craft the second, the Mary Macleod Links, named after Trump's mother, a native of Scotland's north-east. The detailed plans were submitted last week to Aberdeenshire council. The tycoon had previously been involved in a very public quarrel with Alex Salmond over proposals to build 11 offshore wind turbines in Aberdeen Bay. He now believes, though, that the Bay project is unlikely to proceed. He says: "Now the wind farm project is as good as dead, I can reaffirm my commitment to the north-east of Scotland and deliver the world's best golfing destination."

Stephen Park Brown, a Lanarkshire businessman and single-handicap golfer, is typical of Trump's target market: affluent, successful and ambitious. He is effusive in his admiration of the course. "I've been privileged to have played on most of Scotland's top courses and this is up there with the very best. It'll take a few years to mature, but when it does it will be well capable of hosting a major international golf tournament," he says.

There are others who disagree and who want nothing other than for Trump to dismantle his course and disappear back to America. David Milne is the owner of a handsome three-storey house that overlooks the course. He is one of the leaders of the Trump refuseniks. "I very much doubt if a major championship will ever come here, nor even that a second course will ever be built," he says. "Look around you. How could you possibly construct spectator galleries among all of the towering dunes?" he says.

What has unfolded since Trump announced plans for his resort has resembled a circus to which we have all been granted a ringside seat. The development has elicited implacable opposition and the row has engulfed Aberdeenshire council, the Scottish government, two successive first ministers, several environmental groups and the media.

The development was only given the go-ahead after the Scottish government overruled the local council. It was an unprecedented action. The original decision was based on a belief that the economic benefits were simply outweighed by a multitude of environmental concerns. Not the least of these was that a stretch of beach within the development was an area of special scientific interest. The interaction between sand and tide had long been identified as being of unique global scientific value in the study of coastal erosion.

Milne's property is one of several that skirt the course. Trump's people made several attempts to purchase these and this is where what was an intriguing story pitting big business against the environment became almost farcical. Trump's people claim that they offered each householder "very financially attractive options". Trump, though, was about to meet a force he had never encountered: the cussed and implacably thrawn northern Scot.

Malone says: "The deals we offered were well above the market value. We also offered lifetime membership and the option to purchase another property within the development at cost price."

Milne flatly denies this: "I can't speak for the others but I was only offered half the market value of my property, and why would I want to be relocated to an unspecified property within an as-yet-unbuilt housing estate?"

Trump would later describe one of Milne's neighbours, a farmer called Michael Forbes, as "living like a pig. His property is slum life, it's disgusting". When I swung by, it looked like it could do with a wee recalibration, and it seems that he is developing his own museum of ancient agricultural ironmongery. You might not want to see it when, fresh from your kedgeree and herbal infusion, you first throw open the curtains in your £500-a-night suite. But, well … one man's castle and all that.

A documentary by Anthony Baxter, shown on the BBC last year, sought to portray the struggle as blameless homesteaders against a rapacious cattle baron. The film also purported to show examples of shadowy intimidation of local dissidents. The Trump people claim that the film was laughably one-sided and distorted. Whether Aberdeenshire Council would seriously countenance the eviction of local taxpayers by compulsory purchase orders is, as yet, untested.

To my untutored eye, Trump's course has done little to violate the integrity of the natural topography. Despite claims that ramblers have been chased off the premises by security, I saw three separate groups strolling among the dunes.

Surely there are many much worse things to befall one's back yard than to have a five-star golf resort beyond the fence? Forced redevelopment of important green space is a constantly depressing by-product of urban living, no matter how aspirational the neighbourhood.

On the other, in a country which each year is beginning to resemble one giant golf course, how many more do we need? The north-east currently has more than 70 and you can only guess at the long-term sustainability of a few of the luxury championship courses further down the coast if two Hollywood golf resorts suddenly emerge beside them.

Meanwhile, the ordure keeps hitting the fan. "Yes it's a nice course," Milne grudgingly concedes. "But if we are to get a 500-house development, who pays for the sewerage system?"