The best golf courses in Scotland

A guy walks into a bar … Stop right there, you say. I’ve heard it before.

… Not this one, you haven’t. The bar was atop the Royal Dornoch clubhouse in Scotland, and the guy was the club secretary.

He conies over to my foursome to see how we enjoyed the round. Sitting at our table are the Sherpas who caddied for us that day. They were members of the Royal Dornoch Golf Club; in fact, you have to be a member of the club to caddie there. I can’t think of a club in the world whose disposition wouldn’t be improved if the membership included the caddies.

“So what are you doing now?” the secretary says. “Have you played Brora?” I’d never heard of it, and neither had my friends. “Well, that settles it,” he says. “It’s only half an hour north, and you don’t come this way often. Brora is the ancient game, designed by James Braid. You can still get in 18.”

Braid also redesigned the hardest golf course in the world, Carnoustie, but I’ve since learned that the real memorial to him is Brora, headquarters of the James Braid Golfing Society. The nickname of one of my pals in the foursome at the bar is “Braid,” because he bears an uncanny resemblance to the five-time Open champion. So we had to go. Brora did not disappoint. Sheep and cows roam the fairways, and you have to hop over wire fences to get to the greens. Nine holes out and nine back along Kintradwell Bay, with a granite mountain in the distance overhanging the sea called the Ord of Caithness.

Looking back on that unexpected interlude in an otherwise tightly choreographed buddies trip, I realize I haven’t taken enough sideways adventures. We all get stuck in the habit of playing the same courses with the same people. Or chasing the 100 Greatest one by one. But maybe best of all is going to the nooks and extremities of the world and finding golf in the greatness rather than greatness in the golf. –Jerry Tarde, editor-in-chief