As the crow (or raven) flies, Tain Golf Club sits just 3.5 miles from Royal Dornoch, 10.5 miles from Golspie, and 14 miles from Brora. Located in Scotland’s glorious Highlands region, it sits nestled into an excellent stretch of both linksland and heathland on the town’s eastern edge, just down the road from the famed Glenmorangie Distillery. With its aforementioned neighbors, Tain has remained mostly under the radar — at least to traveling Americans. Without Dornoch’s grand setting and link to Donald Ross, or Brora’s quirky fences and farmyard residents, Tain has remained, at best, a golf trip afterthought, but there’s a strong argument it shouldn’t.
Old Tom Morris laid out the original 15 holes in 1889 when it was then called St Duthus Golf Club. Some early financial struggles shrunk the course to 12 holes, but by 1911 the course expanded to 18 holes and a new clubhouse opened along with the current name. A handful of Old Tom’s original holes still exist in some form or fashion, and many play across the property’s most wonderful bits of topography. His green sites are especially thrilling, switching between large, sloping platforms and wavier, ground-hugging specimens that feel more like extensions of the fairway. The accepted tale is that Old Tom claimed he could only find 15 viable green sites when laying out the original course but, to be fair to him, they’re good ones.
The “new” holes at Tain were added around 1894 by John Sutherland, an extremely important figure and former Club Secretary at Royal Dornoch, after the club acquired additional land. They slot in nicely with the originals, perpetuating the charm of Old Tom’s layout, even finding additional bits of undulating ground. No hole does this more so than the (at least moderately) famous 11th hole known as “Alps,” which plays across some of the most gorgeous linksland on the course and runs out to the base of two gigantic mounds that block the view of the seaside greensite. Mae West hole, hold my pint.
Take Note…
Old maps. Recently, one of the farms that sits between Tain’s back nine changed hands, and the new owner accidentally hit a main line while working in their field, flooding two of Tain’s holes. Turns out, given the age of the town, the infrastructure maps are less than accurate (I confirmed this when talking to a local business owner who said after three tries they still hadn’t been able to locate the line under a recently acquired property).
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