Brora Golf Club Please Don't Follow The Herd

For many the most northerly stop on a Scottish golf trip.  A 30 minute drive from Royal Dornoch has you meandering through the Scottish Highlands before arriving upon a rural sleepy town. Welcome to Brora, home to 1200 people and one special golf experience. 

The 18 hole James Braid layout is practically unchanged since his redesign in 1924. The traditional nine in, nine back layout plays along the coastline and flanked on the other side by beautiful countryside and rolling mountains. The air here is clean and fresh. The atmosphere is tranquil. It’s everything you dreamt Scotland would be.

A round on the links of Brora can be a hazardous one. After you’ve dodged the mess the dozens of cattle and sheep leave on the fairways, you traverse the electric fencing keeping them off the putting surfaces, You do this 18 times.

Disputes with crofters and their livestock grazing privileges date back as far as 1915. Records show a motion to remove horses was granted to limit the damage on the golf course.

So why does the current membership feel the need to remove them now? 

The primary reason is agronomy and an effort to improve playing conditions. I sympathise with the greens staff on this. Spending countless hours on the upkeep of the course and cleaning up after the animals, only to find the same mess the following day must be soul destroying for anyone who takes pride in their work. It also prevents course improvements such as the addition of more fairway bunkers. 

“I have taken Brora Golf Course as far as I possibly can, while sharing the land with animals. If we were successful in removing them, I believe we would be able to improve turf quality and the golfer’s experience, move up the rankings and be judged as a golf course rather than a field.”

James MacBeath, Head Greenskeeper, Source: Bloomberg

The Club acknowledge that as a result of course conditions, they have reached a ceiling for recognition in whichever fickle golf course ranking they want to measure themselves against. Currently 27th best golf course in Scotland and 60th best links course in the UK and Ireland. A climb up the rankings is not guaranteed and for most that visit Brora from overseas, few would care.

Like its neighbour Royal Dornoch, Brora Golf Club has renewed its vision to help bring economic growth to its fragile community. The Club now employs 30 staff in a region that faces a de-population crisis. It is acutely aware the important role the Club plays in the prosperity of local people’s lives which golf tourism brings. That should be welcomed and applauded.  

Now ran more professionally and with an emphasis on maximising revenue, green fees for overseas visitors are set to rise to a reported £180 next year. 

While the Club in recent times intentionally avoids using the animals in their marketing, a social media search brings up hundreds of sheep and highland cow selfies. The animals appear on Brora Golf Club media articles, golf tour operator websites and course reviews. Our Instagram video of the Brora animals has nearly 500k views, 12.5k likes and was shared on Visit Scotland’s official page to their 1.7m followers.

I preface all this with the acknowledgement that the decisions at Brora Golf Club fall with the 200 or so local members. It’s their club and what you or I think they should do doesn’t matter. 

But please know that you have something special.

Something that in my humble opinion, money and course rankings can never replace and something in ten years from now, we wish golf had more of. 

A trip to Brora is a ride in a time machine. It’s how golf was and arguably, how golf should look more often. A reminder that golf courses once looked a certain way, prior to the invent of colour television and the annual playing of The Masters. It’s a reminder that links courses can exists by modest means, making golf accessible to all. The grass is grazed, not chemically enhanced. Greens show imperfections and bunkers aren’t perfectly raked. There’s no locker room attendant or concierge to clean your cattle sh*t covered golf shoes. But that’s all OK. It’s OK to be rough around the edges, after all golf is not a game of perfect.

I had two pertinent conversations with North American golf pilgrims who make regular visits to Scotland. They both voiced the same concern:

“Regrettably, like much of the world - the great places are slowly coming postcards of themselves and, I fear, becoming hollowed out. This isn’t a criticism - it’s just reality. There is a thirst for something genuine, local and less known”

Linksland, the area of sandy soil that connects the coastline with the fertile agricultural land. Sandy soils, usefulness for farming and great for golf. Common recreational land that served as a playground and breeding ground for the game of golf as we know it to be now. Rabbit scrapings made golf holes, dishevelled sand dunes that were once sleeping quarters for livestock - made hazards. A modest and simple recreational pastime that has morphed into something a lot more complex.

As golfers we pack our golf travel bags in search of unique experiences, otherwise why travel at all?  Brora is unlike any other golf experience on the planet. Without the grazing animals and electric fences around greens, it becomes a little more ordinary.

When conformity is aplenty Brora, don’t feel a need to join the herd.