The earliest record we have of golf being played at Dornoch comes from Sir Robert Gordon who, in 1630, describes te links in the Earldom of Sutherland as 'fitt for archery and golfing .... they doe surpass the fields of Montrose and Str Andrews.'
The first organised club came into being in 1876 as a successor to the Sutherland Golfing Society which played at both Dornoch and Golspie. The prime movers behind this were the chief constable Alex McHardy, a transplanted Fifer, and Dr Hugh Gunn. The nine hole course, laid out by Old Tom Morris, was officially opened the following year and members paid 2s 6d (around $0.40 nowadays) dues. Another nine holes were added in the next decade and the course's fame spread. A frequent summer visitor was J H Taylor, one third of the great triumvirate with Braid and Vardon, and, he collaborated with John Sutherland, who was secretary of the club from 1883 until the 1930s, in making changes to the course. These involved lengthening the course to, at that time, the fifth longest in Britain to take account of the rubber-cored ball replacing the gutty. The improvements, and the coming of the railway in 1903 which offered the possibility of travelling overnight by sleeping car from London, brought many other fine golfers north, Roger and Joyce Wethered, Sir Ernest Holderness and Harry Vardon among others. The "Royal" prefix was granted to the club in 1906 by King Edward VII.
To many Americans though, Dornoch's greatest claim to fame is not what is there but rather its most famous export, Donald J Ross, the father of American golf course architecture. Born in Dornoch in 1873 he served an apprenticeship with Old Tom Morris in St Andrews and returned to Dornoch as professional in 1893. He left for the United States in 1899 and became professional at Pinehurst in 1900. He designed more than 400 courses in North America including Pinehurst 2,3, and 4; Aronimink, Oakland Hills and Interlachen. The picture is a hand coloured postcard of probably his most famous work, the Pinehurst No. 2 course, shortly after it was completed in 1907. The other image (quite gratuitous but I like the picture) is from the same time and shows the Carolina Hotel at Pinehurst (now the Pinehurst Hotel) which opened in 1901. He was a founder, and honorary preseident, of the American Society of Golf Course Architects and died in Pinehurst in 1948.
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