Sutherland links · Which to play
Royal Dornoch Championship Course vs Brora Golf Club
Forty minutes up the coast from Dornoch is a James Braid links with sheep on it that costs half as much.
| Royal Dornoch Championship Course | Brora Golf Club | |
|---|---|---|
| Green fee (2026) | £215–£360 | £80–£180 |
| Location | Dornoch, Sutherland | Brora, Sutherland |
| Region | Highlands | Highlands |
| Type | Links | Links |
| Holes / par | 18 · par 70 | 18 · par 70 |
| Designer | Old Tom Morris 1877; Donald Ross extended 1904 | John Sutherland c.1891; James Braid redesign 1924 |
The verdict
Which should you play?
Royal Dornoch is the headline and the higher fee: Old Tom Morris in 1877, extended by Donald Ross in 1904, world top ten, and the course every Highland itinerary is built around. Nothing here argues against playing it.
Brora is forty minutes further north and it is not a novelty. John Sutherland laid it out around 1891 and James Braid redesigned it in 1924; at 6,156 yards, par 70, it is the shortest of the northern links and one of the purest — Braid's routing along the coast is almost untouched, which is why the James Braid Golfing Society is based there. The sheep and cattle graze the fairways, and there are electric fences around the greens to keep them off. That is not a quirk the club is embarrassed by; it is how the common grazing rights have always worked.
The honest comparison is that Brora is a better round than its price suggests and Dornoch is worth its price. If you are driving to Dornoch anyway, the extra forty minutes to Brora is the highest-value hour on the whole Highland circuit — and playing both in a day is entirely doable, which is not true of any other pairing this far north.
Pick this one if…
Royal Dornoch Championship Course
It is the one Highland round you will get, and you want the course that justifies the drive on its own.
Pick this one if…
Brora Golf Club
You are already in Sutherland, you want unaltered Braid links at half the money, and electric fences round the greens sounds like a reason to go rather than a reason not to.
Green fees are the clubs' published 2026 visitor rates, shown as a range from the cheapest to the dearest tee time. They change; always confirm on the course profile before you book. We don't take a cut of your green fee — the verdict above is ours, not the pro shop's.
More: which should you play?