Nairn Dunbar Golf Club

When Sir Alexander Dunbar of Boath stepped on to the first tee here in May 1899, just as Queen Victoria was celebrating her eightieth birthday, he declared open another golfing gem on the coastline of the Moray Firth, adding Nairn Dunbar Golf Club to Royal Dornoch and Nairn as "must play" clubs in the region. Sir Alexander donated both his name and sixty acres of whins and gorse for the admirable pursuit of a game in an area that enjoys a surprisingly mild climate for such a northerly latitude.

A challenging par four opens the par 72 course, followed by a shortish par four, then a straightforward par three, allowing a relatively gentle warm up. Be prepared though for a strong quartet of long, demanding par fours which are then encountered, where gorse, trees, greenside bunkers and out of bounds all present problems. This tough sequence of holes is then topped off by the semi-blind par three "Brodie," the 163-yard signature hole 8th, with its green nestled in a bowl, surrounded by bunkers.

Three newer holes are located around the turn, at the furthest point from the clubhouse, before the routing moves inland, culminating in a muscular three-hole stretch that maintains the challenging nature of Nairn Dunbar right to the end. With two par fives in this closing section at holes 16 and 18, you might think there's the chance of perhaps even securing a birdie - think again, as the benign stroke index for these holes is very misleading, especially at the last, which requires a blind approach shot to the severely raised home green.

Richard Johnstone, Nairn Dunbar Course Manager, kindly supplied us with the following quote in October 2016:

Over the last few years, we have made great strides towards promoting links golf here at Nairn Dunbar Golf Links. Continued tree and gorse removal will only allow the natural grasses to flourish. There has been a big attempt to firm the surfaces up: sand topdressing regularly, hollow coring approaches and sanding to promote firm entrances to greens, allowing players to use the bump and run shot.

Regular over seeding to greens with bent and fescue seed has seen us move from Poa-dominated greens to around 70% bent grass 10%Fescue. Fairway cutting height has been taken down from 12 mm to 10 mm which has made a big difference, allowing golfers to putt from well off the green, which was not possible before.

A rough management plan is in place where we will cut back all our rough areas twice a year, scarifying, spraying and picking up the clippings so that we can reduce the amount of rougher grasses and promote the finer links-like grasses to enable us to line our fairways with golden, wispy rough.