A Lesson in Accepting,
if Not Embracing,
Regrettable Experiences
Golspie Golf Club
Golspie, Scotland
Greens fee: £25.00 (for Autumn Classic open event)
Date played: October 6, 2024
The political strategist Stuart Stevens has written that the Scottish Highlands pull at his heart for the same reason as does his native Mississippi: that there is something moving, even if painfully so, about places of great tragedy.
As it turns out, the ties between the Highlands and the American South run far deeper than Nineteenth Century human-rights violations. Three hundred million years ago, two huge landmasses collided to form Pangea, the supercontinent. At their meeting arose a gigantic mountain range, comparable to the modern Himalayas. The mountains aged together, enduring the same wind and near-unending rain, slowly worn down smaller and smaller. After a hundred million years, the Atlantic Ocean rushed in to divide the mountain range, and the landmasses beneath their feet drifted apart. They slowly settled into the homes we know for them now: to the southwest, the Appalachian Mountains; and far to the northeast, the Scottish Highlands, separated by more than three thousand miles of ocean, but united by birth.
A look back from the eighth tee toward the seventh hole, where Golspie transitions from links to heathland under the watch of Ben Bhraggie.
Among the Scottish hills surviving those 300 million years is Ben Bhraggie, sitting just west to the town of Golspie, with little more than 1,300 feet left of its ancient might. Upon its peak stands a tower, 100 feet tall, visible on clear days from no less than seven miles away. That is no accident.
Midway through a round at Golspie Golf Club, not far from the hill’s feet, I pointed and asked my playing partners what it was. A moment passed without an answer.
“It’s just a tower,” finally came the answer.
Yes, I said, but what is its significance?
“It’s the Duke of Sutherland.” Another moment. And then: “He helped lead the Clearances.”
One of the three grass fairway bunkers guarding the left side of Golspie’s 15th, the first of four parkland-style holes to finish the round.
This time, I was the one with the moment caught in my throat. The Clearances were a century-long campaign by powerful landowners in which northern Scots were evicted — often involuntarily — by the tens of thousands and displaced from lands their families had called home for centuries. Some of these Scots were forced south. Others were put on ships to North America. When the Clearances began around 1750, about a quarter of Scotland’s people called the Highlands home. Today, it’s more like 4 percent. George Leveson-Gower, the first Duke of Sutherland — and perhaps the world’s wealthiest person during his lifetime — was more responsible than most. After his death in 1833, the tower was erected in his honor — paid for through a tax levied on the few Scots left in the region.
“If he was involved in the Clearances,” I asked, “then why the hell does he have a monument?”
“Because it’s our history,” my partner said. “So we have to keep it.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was serious. I let it go.
. . .
I’d arrived in Golspie an afternoon earlier. Twenty-two hours before that, I’d walked out of my house en route to three American airports, two more British ones, and a two-hour train ride from Inverness. By the time I put down my bags at the bed and breakfast, I should have been exhausted. But I was a quarter-mile from Golspie Golf Club, and the shadows were getting longer. I grabbed my camera and practically floated down the road to the course.
Like any traditional links course, Golspie uses its bunkers as true hazards from which players should expect an extra stroke — if not more.
Golspie had been on my radar for at least a decade. I’d been to Scotland once before, in 2016. Dornoch was the farthest north I’d made it. But of the places I saw on that trip, Dornoch alone felt like home. I resolved, “one of these days,” to trek back for a visit exclusively in the Highlands — especially for some of the courses farther north. And when I realized earlier this year that my family would be spending a week in October at the beach with my wife’s parents, my “one of these days” was at hand.
With the Highlands’ embarrassment of golf course riches, I probably could spend two weeks without getting bored for a minute. But I had just six days to spare, with two 22-hour travel days included. That meant that I’d have to prioritize. I also resolved not to rent a car (both for budget reasons and the goal of zero head-on car crashes), which meant focusing on courses within walking distance of public transportation. With those guideposts in mind, I landed on four golf courses: Golspie, Brora, Royal Dornoch, and Tain.
The walk from town toward Golspie Golf Club along Ferry Road.
By the time I walked out of the bed and breakfast, the sun was well on its way toward the western horizon. That left time for only a quick preview, but the lengthening shadows made up for the visit’s brevity. At the corner of the golf course nearest town, the par-3 second hole’s green nestles into the corner of Ferry Road and Church Street, with a short walk to the third hole running away from town along the coast of the North Sea. I snapped a few photos, watched a lady play the second hole (while trying not to look like I was watching), and spent a few minutes feeling the wind on my neck. I was finally here.
I’d entertained visions of an evening at a pub, but by the time I headed back toward town, social ambition had left me. I carried out a fried haddock dinner from the Trawler, a local favorite chip shop, and wolfed it down on a bench overlooking Golspie’s North Beach. I made it back to my room at the bed and breakfast with the sky a glimmering purple, with the sun long since hidden behind Ben Bhraggie. I closed the curtains, turned off the lamp, and collapsed into bed. I’d been awake for 30 hours. It was 7 p.m.
. . .
Now, here’s the catch about Golspie.
Six months prior, when the journey went from pipe dream to it’s happening, I scrambled to cobble together an itinerary. Even six months out, though, Royal Dornoch’s tee sheet was nearly full. I had to settle for whatever I could get, and then build the rest of the trip around that. That left just one day when I could fit Golspie in: on Sunday, during an open tournament. The good news is that I would get a deep discount on the cost of play. The bad news is that I would have to hit 18 cups, which typically is much too golf for my golf. Generally, I’m a big believer in a modified form of equitable stroke control, under which I give myself as many mulligans as I can talk myself into without fully embracing shame. It’s a complicated formula, but suffice it to say that it’s not unusual for me to drop a second ball five or six times per round — because it’s golf, and because golf is a game, and because games are fun, so who cares? There would be none of that at Golspie — a course I’d never seen, in a format (real golf, ostensibly competitive) I’d never played, on the first round of an overseas trip. I drank an extra glass of orange juice with my full Scottish breakfast and prepared for the worst.
Golspie’s strongest stretch is its opening run of pure links holes. At the par-3 sixth, the routing turns inland; by the time the eighth hole arrives, Golspie embraces a heathland identity. What this transition portends in lost fun, Golspie makes up for with one of its terrific par-3 holes.
My partners couldn’t have been nicer guys: a local Golspie member about my age, and an older, retired gentleman from down the road who played most of his golf at Tain. Unlike me, who arrived 90 minutes early and fidgeted near the first tee while other groups teed off, my partners arrived with around 15 minutes to spare and without a hint of anxiety. They were both better than me: the younger played to about a 10 index, and the retiree to an 8. I haven’t kept up with a handicap in recent years, but from cobbling together my rounds from earlier in the year, I came out at an 18: not exactly the peak of my career, but serviceable enough (I thought) to get around in double digits. We introduced ourselves on the tee box, waited for the group in front to pass beyond the first fairway’s leftward bend, and teed off.
Golspie saves its best for first, not last. The course opens with six terrific links holes, with contours ranging from subtle to dramatic, blind shots over large dunes, and thoughtfully guarded greens — part of a layout that, by now, has been stretched to the property’s limits at 6,021 yards, playing to a par of 70. Even with the cold wind blowing off my right from Golspie Bay, I managed my way up the 493-yard, par-5 first hole with a chance at bogey; and on the terrific par-3 second hole (166 yards), I pured a 5-hybrid over the three bunkers guarding the green’s front and held the green against runoffs on both sides, before two-putting respectably for par.
Everything was going great, until one of my partner nonchalantly mentioned: “Oh, we should have exchanged scorecards by now.”
What?
Unhinged ground movement between the tee and green makes players think twice about playing short of the green at the tough par-3 second hole.
I didn’t grow up playing golf. I took up the game seriously (if an 18-handicap can call himself a “serious” player) around the time I turned 30, with exactly zero competitive rounds to my name. We exchange scorecards? As in, another person keeps my score (and, more importantly, knows my score)? I’d long accepted that I’d have to go without mulligans for the day. I had imagined, though, that keeping score in a small competitive event would entail at least the courtesies of sharing a public restroom: there are no secrets about what either of us is doing, but at least let me handle it myself.
I’d love to blame everything that happened that day on the unnerving experience of true honesty. But the truth is that I would’ve struggled to keep my scorecard in double digits even with my typical policy toward second chances. Golspie is a tough course. Its first seven holes are true links: the first two holes sprinting from the clubhouse back toward town, then turning back to run along the beach. Within this stretch lie several of Golspie’s best holes: two of the course’s outstanding par-3s (the second and the 151-yard, downhill sixth), plus the seaside par-4 third, par-5 fourth (Golspie’s strongest hole), and short par-4 fifth holes: each running straightaway along the shore, over swales, hollows, and dunes.
At the short par-4 seventh, Golspie changes direction, playing away from the beach and never returning. Its uphill approach marks the course’s turn toward a heathland setting, with trees, unmowed fescue, and thick ground cover constantly in play. I’d made the turn in 48 strokes — in reach, I thought, of a double-digits finish.
A relatively flat green is the only safe harbor offered at Golspie’s brutal ninth hole.
The homeward nine proved me badly wrong. My standard high fade devolved into a slice in the cold wind, and fairways became more and more elusive. Often, I didn’t miss by much. But over and over, the thick growth along the fairways cost me balls and strokes.
“The grass won’t be as thick tomorrow at Brora, because of the sheep,” one of my playing partners told me while I hunted for a lost ball.
“Then this place needs some sheep,” I said.
On the ninth teebox, one of my playing partners remarked that it was his favorite hole on the course. I asked him what he liked about it. “It’s just a really tough hole,” he said. “It requires two really good shots.” He was right: the 420-yard par-4’s fairway tightens in the landing area, and its green is guarded left and right by bunkers, with runoffs short and left and behind the green. It offers little margin for error — or for imagination.
The turn back toward town is not much more fun for a mediocre player. The 11th, 12th, and 13th holes run together unremarkably: all par-4s, all straightaway, all with narrow driving lanes and more than enough thick native growth to lose balls just a few feet off the fairway. None of Golspie’s fairways is overly generous, but its narrow fairways are particularly noticeable on the homeward nine. The 11th fairway, for instance, measures perhaps 30 yards in width; in contrast, the fairway at the third hole (which begins the links holes’ march along the beach) is more like 35 yards. That doesn’t sound like much until your ball is five yards off the fairway — particularly since trouble on Golspie’s heathland holes is much harder to escape. Until the par-3 16th hole, with its incredible two-tiered green and brutal runoffs, the greenside bunker configurations on many of the heathland holes change hardly at all.
Golspie saves two of its par-3s (which are all exceptional) for the last three holes, but by the time I finished the tough, long par-4 18th, I was relieved to be finished. One of my partners returned my scorecard for me to check. I didn’t turn it in.
. . .
Reconciling the significance and the shamefulness of historic tragedies is, of course, not a struggle reserved for the Scots. Anyone who grows up in the Deep South lives literally in the shadows of Confederate monuments. And there is no denying the historic significance of that episode.
Playing short of the green at Golspie's difficult par-3 16th hole takes its two greenside bunkers out of play, but finding the correct tier with a second shot is no walk in the park.
Where I have landed, though, is that acknowledging our history and honoring it are two different things. And monuments are for honoring history’s best: literally uplifting our proudest moments for everyone, present and future, to see. It is not for me to tell Highlanders how to feel about monuments to their painful past. But it is possible — prudent, even — both to learn from history and to choose against memorializing it.
At least that’s what I tell myself whenever I resist looking back at that scorecard.
. . .
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