A Nod to Nairn
- Gunnar Kobin
- Apr 22
- 5 min read
We arrived in Inverness on the Sunday evening after the Aberdeen leg of the trip. Trump, Royal Aberdeen, Murcar, Cruden Bay, then Peterhead and Fraserburgh on the way north. By the time we got to the hotel I was tired enough that the idea of teeing off again the next morning at Nairn felt like a punishment rather than a treat. But Nairn is one of those courses I'd been wanting to play for years and we'd built the whole trip around getting up here, so off we went.
Should mention the drive from Inverness to Nairn first. Twenty minutes east on the A96, dead easy, and the town itself is one of those slightly faded Victorian seaside places that are everywhere on the British coast. Pleasant. The golf club sits at the western edge with the railway line behind and the Moray Firth in front of you. Hard to miss.
OK so the course.
Founded 1887. James Braid did most of the bunkering and greens around 1909. Mackenzie & Ebert did a renovation between 2018 and 2020. Walker Cup hosted here in 1999, won by GB&I against an American team that had Matt Kuchar on it. Curtis Cup in 2012. Amateur Championship has been here twice. Fine. The pedigree is real and you can keep reading about it on their website if you care.
What matters is what it's like to play.
The opening seven holes run east along the firth. Water hard right the whole time. Wind off the land the day we played which made the firth even more in play than usual. I lost two balls in the first three holes trying to play my normal slight fade. Switched to a punch draw on the 4th tee, which is not a shot I'm comfortable with, and immediately stopped losing balls. Funny how the wind teaches you new shots when you're playing somewhere properly exposed.
The 4th is where the course wakes up. Smart par 4. The 5th, 6th and 7th are good honest holes too. Nothing tricked up about any of them, just well-designed golf where the right shot to the right spot is rewarded and the wrong shot is punished. The way it should be.
Greens are quick. Properly quick. James Braid said something once about the texture of the turf and the character of the greens at Nairn being unrivalled and you feel the truth of that the first time you stand over a putt. They're not unfair. Just full of subtle slope that you have to read carefully because nothing is obvious. I three-putted three times on the front nine. Every one of them was my fault for trusting my eyes instead of working out what the slope was actually doing. Lesson learned eventually.
The 8th is supposedly Old Tom Morris's most intact contribution from the 1889 work. Honest two-shot hole. You can feel the age of the design somehow. Hard to describe. The land just feels like it's been a golf course forever which it almost has been.
After 9 the course breaks the out-and-back pattern. 13 14 and 15 climb inland and uphill. Steep walk up to the 13th tee. There were two older guys behind us who were taking it very slowly. Fair enough. The reward at the top is the 14th green. Highest point on the course. Firth opening up below you and the Black Isle across the water. The hole is a par 3 with a green that has a deep swale running through the middle of it. I think it's called a Biarritz green. Or supposedly inspired by one. I don't know the exact terminology. Whatever. You hit a committed shot or the swale catches you and you've got a stupid two-putt at best. I committed. Made par. Stood there a minute.
Coming back down for the closing stretch you're back on flat ground. The 17th is a clever little par 4 with a burn cutting across the front of the green. Drivable in the right conditions. I laid up. Made bogey because I chunked the wedge from 100 yards. The approach is harder than it looks because the green sits up and rejects anything coming in flat.
The 18th is a par 5 around 553 yards. Generous fairway. Reachable in two with a good drive. I got my drive away. Hit a 3-wood that came up about 30 yards short of the green. Chunked the wedge. Lipped out for birdie. Tapped in for par. Walked off the green thinking I was lucky to have made a 5 at all.
That's basically the round.
The clubhouse is where Nairn earns extra points. Lounge looks down the 1st and 18th. Restaurant has proper food. The Archive Room is something else though. They've got photographs and memorabilia going back over 130 years and if you have any interest in golf history at all give yourself half an hour after the round to wander through it. I spent more time in there than I'd planned. There's a photo of the 1999 Walker Cup that I stood in front of for a while just looking at the people in the gallery. Hard to explain why. Just a moment of feeling like the place had been doing this same thing for a very long time and would still be doing it long after I was gone.
Cost was £199 in summer when I played which is steep. They do a Nairn Ticket combining a round at Nairn and a round at Nairn Dunbar (the other club in town) for £225 which is much better value if you're going to be in the area anyway. Nairn Dunbar is a perfectly good links in its own right.
Where does Nairn rank among the Highland courses on this trip. Castle Stuart edges it for me on views and drama. Old Petty edges it on greens. Royal Dornoch we played later in the week and that's at another level. But Nairn beats all of them on something I find hard to put a finger on. The sense of being somewhere that's just been quietly excellent for nearly 140 years. No fuss. No remaking itself for the modern age. Just doing what it does.
If I had to pick one Highland course for someone who's never played proper Scottish golf and wants to understand what it really is, it might be this one over Royal Dornoch. Royal Dornoch is more famous and probably the better course on the day. But Nairn is purer somehow. More representative. The Scottish links course as it's supposed to be.
Anyway. Worth the trip. I'll be back. Probably with the Nairn Ticket so I can do Nairn Dunbar at the same time.
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