Royal Dornoch (Struie)

The Struie course at Royal Dornoch started out in the early 1900s as the Ladies Course and this layout, along with part of the Championship course, was taken out of play when the Air Ministry acquired it as the site for an airfield during World War II.

When hostilities ended, the Championship course was extended – George Duncan adding holes 6 to 11 – to fashion the modern day links that’s now revered around the golfing world, and six of its former holes (13-18) were appended to three from the old Ladies course to create a new layout.

This 9-hole course remained in that format for over half a century until adjacent land by the shores of the Dornoch Firth became available at the end of the 1990s, allowing Donald Steel and Robin Hiseman to expand the Struie layout into a full 18-hole course.

Essentially, the 6,265-yard course in play today is configured with the opening two holes and closing hole routed across an area of high ground close to the clubhouse, while the remaining holes occupy the largely level terrain that lies closer to the waters of the Firth.

“Gizzen Briggs,” the slightly doglegged 406-yard 5th is rated the most difficult hole on the front nine, whilst “Black Burn,” the 429-yard 14th is the toughest hole on the inward half, playing to a green that’s protected by an intimidating pond to the right side of the putting surface.

Course architect, Robin Hiseman (now working with European Golf Design), commented as follows:

The Struie redevelopment was born of a desire to elevate the status of the second course, so that the sale of combined course day tickets was a viable option. The old Struie had been tinkered about with by Donald Steel before I became involved, but was still mostly a knockabout course for the locals and not really suitable to attract visitors in large numbers. It was a big thrill to be commissioned by such a great club and the highlight of my career at that time. I really enjoyed working on the scheme and there were good people at the club, with an ambitious vision for the future.

With the addition of 300 acres of new land alongside the Dornoch Firth, there was scope to make considerable changes. The first phase of redesign was limited in so much that the course had to start and finish at the existing clubhouse. This limited the incursion onto the new land to just 5 holes, but this was arranged so that further new holes could be added in the future to meet the ultimate objective of creating an entirely new second course. I mapped out these additional holes but sadly, the ambition for this has not yet been realised.

The club’s aim was to increase the length and par of the course so that in terms of challenge it was more of an equal with the Championship Course. This involved the five new holes (9 to 13) plus the redesign of a further six holes (3, 4, 5, 6, 14 and 15) within the Struie. Two holes were abandoned completely (the old par 3’s at 4 and 15) in the reorganisation and a further three were converted into a three-hole warm up loop alongside the practice ground.

We also took on a radical redesign of the burn that crossed the course. When we arrived it was a straight, wide canal, but we restored it to its original winding course. I don’t think many people realise that was part of the work, but I’m very proud of that part of the project. The style of the new holes was heavily influenced by the natural sand dunes and blow outs found between what are now the 10th and 11th holes. When they were discovered, this area bore comparison to what is found at Kiawah Island. Sadly, the culling of the rabbit population has resulted in the sand blow outs filling in with grasses to a large degree.

The new Struie is a good test of golf, but it has never really hung together as a cohesive test, due to the patchwork of design styles and landscapes. There are some great holes out there and some lovely natural contours, but the flat part dissected by roads and alongside the caravan park was short on natural appeal. I had a plan to realign and rebunker holes 16 and 17 which would have added a good strategic twist but never got the opportunity to see it through as the committee structure changed.

The five new holes took the Struie to a fantastic location down by the firth and they were good, testing and spacious golf holes, in contrast to some of the tight holes amongst the gorse. I went back to the Struie three or four years ago and was rather upset with what I saw. The new holes have been heavily sanitised with many of the prominent strategic features of the original holes having been removed, along with a handful of beautiful ridge line bunkers. It seemed to me that the ambition for the Struie had diminished when it could easily have been of Skibo quality had the full plan been implemented.

Work on the new clubhouse started at the end of 2023, so a new par three 9th on the shoreline is to replace the existing 1st hole on the Struie.