Royal Dornoch

The journey to Scotland's far north is itself part of what makes Royal Dornoch memorable. Most of the country's great links cluster around the central belt or the East Lothian coast, within easy reach of Edinburgh. Dornoch sits nearly 300 miles north of the border, past Inverness and up into Highland countryside that feels genuinely remote. Those who make the effort are rewarded with a course that has been described by Tom Watson as one of his five favourites in the world, and by many others as the finest natural links they have ever played. The elevated terrain above the Dornoch Firth produces tumbling fairways, ridgeline greens and views across the water that are unlike anything found further south.

The Championship Course plays to just over 6,700 yards from the back tees, but length is emphatically not the point. The greens at Dornoch are the defining feature: raised, plateau surfaces angled to shed approach shots in unexpected directions, demanding precise trajectory control and a willingness to use the ground rather than the air. Old Tom Morris visited and offered initial advice, and John Sutherland, the club's secretary for many decades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shaped much of the course's enduring character. The 14th, Foxy, is frequently cited as one of the finest natural par 4s in links golf, its green sitting on a ridge above the Firth with no bunkers needed to defend it.

Royal Dornoch has hosted the British Amateur Championship and the Senior Open Championship, though it has never staged The Open, primarily because the town's infrastructure and transport links make the logistics of a major championship difficult. For many golfers, this is part of its appeal: the course exists almost in its own world, unsullied by the corporate apparatus of a regular Open venue, and the town of Dornoch, with its 13th-century cathedral and unhurried pace, makes for a very different backdrop to the commercial bustle of an Open host town. A visit here, combined with other Highland courses, represents one of the great Scottish golf journeys.