Royal Dornoch Championship Course

Royal Dornoch is the course most decorated golfers name when asked the most fun round they've ever played. Tom Watson said it. So did Ben Crenshaw. The ranking lists put it consistently in the world top ten; the locals call it 'the course Donald Ross learned on' because he was the greenkeeper here at the turn of the century before he sailed for America and laid out Pinehurst, Oakland Hills and four hundred others.

The course has been here in some form since 1616 — making it among the oldest continuous golf sites in the world — and the modern routing was finalised by John Sutherland in 1900. The 14th, Foxy, is the photographed par 4: a long, double-doglegging hole with no bunkers, just gorse on both sides and a green that falls away to the rear. The 5th, 11th and 17th are the others regulars cite as the heart of the course.

Visitor green fee is £255 in 2026. Caddies are excellent and worth taking on a first round — the angles into greens matter more than yardages here, and the local knowledge saves three to four shots. Booking via royaldornoch.com up to a year ahead. The drive north is real (about 1h 15m from Inverness, 4h+ from Edinburgh) but every visitor we've ever met has come back saying it was the best round of the trip.