Playing Royal Dornoch
Some modern golf course designs exhibit excessive distances between green and tee, yardages that could add a couple of par-4s to an already lengthy stroll. Back in the day, when golf course design was a case of identifying the green with a feather, walking a few paces and marking the tee with a cane, the effortless use of the land with little man-made intervention created fairways that flowed in a faultless fashion. Those foundation courses have often disappeared as technology has altered clubs and balls, and subsequently altered the land, yet there are still pockets of perfection which lift the spirit and invoke memories of sepia days past, where it all felt so natural. Royal Dornoch, at the edge of the Highlands of Scotland, does just that.
Old Tom laid out an original nine holes here in 1886, no doubt gazing wistfully, as today’s golfers do, out to the North Sea and Dornoch Firth which are visible from every hole on the course. Its growth to 18 holes was largely down to John Sutherland, Secretary of the Club, and his employment of a young Donald Ross as professional and greenkeeper after an apprenticeship to Old Tom in St Andrews was insightful. That Donald’s prolific designs feature many of the nuances of Royal Dornoch, such as the upturned saucer greens, makes the Championship course a place of pilgrimage for those travelling golfers who’ve experienced his work far, far away. Whilst in the town, they also have the opportunity to play over the Club’s other challenging course, The Struie, navigating a different terrain but no less challenging.
The marine terraces upon which the Championship course is set will provide the golfer with a series of wonderfully enjoyable challenges, running straight out and back along the narrow strip of firm turf that hugs the beach, with considerable changes in elevation both laterally and linear. The course only switches in direction at the 9th and the 17th … heading home, into a strong prevailing wind, it can sap the energy and the will in equal measure with long par- 4s, a 557-yard dogleg par-5 and a bunker-strewn par-3 played from the dunes’ edge at the beach, just to tighten the screws. It’s a course that seeks the best from the best off the back tees. But on a benign, sunny day and playing from the yellow tees it’s one step from heaven.
Recent changes to the course have included some for safety measures, and some improvements to both the visual aspects and playability of the links. The 3rd hole was pushed a little right to keep play clear of some new housing developments off the left boundary slope; the 7th was re-routed to a new infinity green set along the top of a gorse- covered cliff which runs precipitously down the right. The 434-yard, par-4 8th hole, was recently altered to push the new tees towards the location of the old 7th green. Golfers will now be more likely playing their second shots into the green from the top of the hill, as was the case before the advances in golf club technology, turning the clock back to the way the hole was designed to be played.
These changes aside, the course has some world-class, memorable holes that will live long in the memory. The par-3 second hole, ‘Ord’, is played usually wind behind to one of those upturned saucer greens. A pair of deep, spectacle bunkers sit intimidatingly on the front slope, and the banking which skirts the green behind them rushes the ball away if not landed perfectly. Tom Watson famously referred to the second shot on this hole as “the hardest shot in golf”, for the inevitability of missing its narrow, raised green with your tee-shot means a nervy pitch or putt up the tightly mown banks at least once. Thankfully, the walk through the gorse from the 2nd green to the 3rd tee is then an uplifting, overwhelming experience that delivers a majestic panorama of the course ahead... and takes your mind off the score.
Surprisingly, another par-3, the 6th hole, is one to look back upon with a sense of achievement. You can see it coming from the 3rd , the 4th and then the 5th holes because of the height and the angles of the terraces. Covered in dense thickets of gorse, and often with their yellow, aromatic flowers wafting a smell of coconut as you pass, these left- hand slopes usher the fairways and greens north until you arrive on the tee, already mentally defeated by what lies ahead. A long, narrow green runs away from you… a steep drop to the right will carry your ball far away from the putting surface given the slightest opportunity, unless it’s caught short and right in a deep bunker because you under-clubbed… or, if you develop a draw and pull it left, there is a line of three circular bunkers waiting to catch you, so perfect that they could have been put there by Scotty Cameron. And there’s gorse up the slope to the left above them. It’s SI 8, 156 yards off the yellows, so it has teeth, and regardless of your score there you’ll be smiling all the way up the path to the 7th tee.
Having played along the top, the 8 th hole brings you down to the coastal stretch where the course sits tight to the sand and the foam, hugging the beach around the bay and offering no shelter, no support and demanding your A-game. Tucked below a strand of marram-covered low dunes, the 11th and 12th swing you round from pointing west to directly south, lifting you into the dunes via neatly-manicured paths to the 13th ’s tees set a matter of feet from the beach below. This par-3 seems easier at SI 15, but with seven bunkers guarding all approaches it is by no means simple: there’s even a bunker just off the green, right in the centre of the path from the tee.
That hole leads you to ‘Foxy’, the course’s SI 1 and often referred to as the world’s most natural golf hole. From the tee, rolling mounds of wispy fescue billow gently requiring a good carry to the widening fairway. Ridges rise out of the fairway too, creating hollows in the landing zone whilst a wavy series of embankments cut in and out down the right from the 3rd and 17th fairways, meaning any slice will face a blind shot to a heavily swaled green that rises from the fairway to sit atop a steep banking.
As a whole, these links are perfection; seamlessly mixing designs from the old and the new, whilst effortlessly lifting you up and easing you down through stunning natural contours that seem to flow like melting Highland toffee across the landscape. And, all the while, the course is embraced by the sea as it has been for millennia, the original designer of Royal Dornoch’s Championship course and one which, try as you might, you’ll probably sacrifice a ball or two to in your round. It’ll be the most serene parting you’ll ever experience.
As Tom Watson said, it’s the most fun he’s ever had playing golf.