I was standing on the tee at the second hole on Brora—and to my immediate right, the waters of Moray Firth were a beautiful deep blue and the sky was filled with dozens of different types of birds wheeling overhead or walking on the beach and the air was crisp and fresh as it swirled off the firth and there was just one thought in my mind:
How in the hell do I hit over the cattle standing right where my ball was likely to come down.
And, if I lay up short of the cattle, how do I miss the sheep standing in front of them?
Has anybody ever heard an announcer say something like: “it looks like Tiger is going with a seven-iron so that he can lay up short of the holsteins.” And the other announcer say: “yeah, a seven, but he can’t take it left because that’s where the sheep are and sheep are red-staked on this course?”
I had been golfing for almost sixty years in the states and never once had I had to take cattle (or even one single cow) into my calculations. Sheep I had gotten used to by this time, but cattle? Who knows what the average placid cow thinks in terms of revenge after being hit by a little red sphere? My guess was that the average cow would barely feel a golf ball hitting them but who knew? And did I really want to turn a 220 yard drive into a 180 yard drive by slamming my ball into pot roast on the hoof.
Brora is like that. Twenty miles north of Royal Dornoch, it is the Wild West of northern Scottish courses. The most natural of golf links, the course seems not so much to have been carved out of the ancient sand dunes and the raw bracken and gorse but to have simply emerged, inevitably, from the sandy soil along Moray Firth. .
James Braid, one of the Great Triumvirate of British golf at the turn of the twentieth century (along with Harry Vardon and John Henry Taylor), created the ultimate design of the course in the early 20’s (1920’s). And since then, no one has been willing to commit the ultimate heresy of changing Braid’s plan.
Braid was a taciturn man, a reserved man, who found travel difficult to impossible (he designed courses in Asia and America using only topographic maps). As with his views on life, his views on golf course design were simple: golf courses are a matter of angles and lines and golfers should get what they deserve. I have held Braid notes in my hand and they have the clarity of high-grade diamonds. THIS line of attack goes HERE and THAT line of attack goes THERE. (He believed that holes should offer two lines of attack.) Unlike his great contemporary Harry Colt, who believed in designing courses that tempted players with risk-and-reward shots, Braid’s courses are straightforward . . . if you are in the groove. Penance and prison, however, are never far away on a Braid course. A bit of a purist personally, he believed that only the best shots should be rewarded. Mediocre shots should be relegated to places dowdy and down-at-the-heels. If, however, a golfer’s shot had a tinge, a hint, of scarlet, that shot, he believed, should be turned out into golfdom’s cold streets, forsaken and homeless, to rest, eventually, alone in the sand.
Although Braid, along with his construction foreman John Stutt, was probably the first golf architect to fully use modern earth-moving equipment, his use of that equipment was not heavy-handed. In fact, Braid courses are subtle; they blend effortlessly with the terrain surrounding them, hiding in plain sight the dangers that await. My first time around Brora, I was puzzled by the number of “pretty good” shots I hit that became outright disasters. Having now played the course in the company of other American golfers seeing a Braid course for the first time, I know that they too had the same problem: unlike most American courses, simply mediocre shots, which might land in the second cut near the fairway in the States, seem to inexorably drift afield in ways unexpected and often tragic.
Brora’s front nine is magnificent, a blend of holes running into, and not around, the ancient sand dunes, following the curve of Moray Firth beneath the wheeling gulls. Eight, in particular, is wonderful. It is a short par 5—as Braid advocated—but two good shots still leave you with a blind shot to a green off-camber to the fairway, elevated onto a dune, and remarkably hard to hit accurately.
If, however, the front nine is brilliant, the back nine is a masterpiece. Virtually every shot requires the golfer to calculate angles and lines and be careful of slight, seemingly natural, folds in the fairways. Braid tucked the holes of the back nine in between brush and rolling and twisting landscapes:
As you get closer to the 18th, the holes twist harder and the shots become more persnickety. The 108-yard 13th crosses the same burn twice and invites you to misjudge the green entirely (spoiler alert—the green is flat . . . it just doesn’t look like it). Sixteen—only 335 yards long—has a corset wrapped around its middle and tempts the golfer to play long . . . and then, perhaps, to disappear. I hit a fine drive down the right hand side of 16 my first time around—I could have not missed the fairway by more than five yards if I missed it at all. Of course, since I never saw the ball again, I will never really know. Unless you are a single-handicapper, lay up on your drive.
Seventeen is a magnificent hole. You must hit the ball squarely into what is a valley of potential sin and then take an extra club (or two) to carry the green. And, mate, if the wind is quartering from your right, nothing I can say will help you.
Eighteen, a 190 yard par three ending beneath the eyes of half the world watching you from the clubhouse, gives you two choices. On the green or afoul of disaster. My first time playing it, I hit a wonderful shot that, on almost anything other than a Braid course, would have skimmed past the left-hand bunker and rolled toward the middle of the green. Braid’s (and Stutt’s) skill with land, however, assured me a quick succession: a feel of glowing success followed instantly by crest-fallen gloom as an unnoticed bend (a very slight bend) of the land curved the ball left, leaving me almost dead in the trap. (I blasted out and, to my surprise, stopped it at tap-in distance.)
There is no course more natural than Brora. The very best of 1920s golf is alive, just a bit north of Dornoch. And let’s be truthful, Royal Dornoch is a beast of a course, however natural and beautiful it may be. For, you, the average player, Brora is just as natural and far more within your range. Plus, you get the delights of playing a Braid course at a fraction of the cost of Dornoch.
Great read and sums up Brora very well, lovely clubhouse and friendly welcome, surprised no mention of the electric fences protecting the superb greens, remember to step over them!
A great unique place to play golf.
It a great course we'll described here only other thing to add it that. In 30 years of playing the course it never plays the same way twice take for example that short thirteenth with its danger short one day your standing hitting a wedge or low iron the next day the wind strengthens from the east and suddenly your hitting your best mid iron hopping it makes the front edge when you multiply that variance by 18 and the mixed quality of shots a mid to high handicapper hits you have a different adventure awaiting you every time you play. So follow my advice play it often and enjoy it my tip for those who play it is this you have played the course you faced the worst view of the 18th that of standing on the tee trying to find that tiny green so make sure you also enjoy the best view of it from the clubhouse with your favorite drink in hand watching others struggle and fight to tame it.