Castle Stuart at Cabot Highlands: Still the Better of the Two
- Gunnar Kobin
- Apr 22
- 6 min read
Let me get straight to my conclusion. After playing both courses at Cabot Highlands on the same day in the first week of September 2025, Old Petty in the morning and Castle Stuart in the afternoon, my honest verdict is that Castle Stuart is the better course. By a clear margin. Old Petty is excellent and Tom Doak has built something that will rise up the rankings as it matures, and I covered all of that in a separate post. But if someone forced me to pick one to play for the rest of my life, I'd pick Castle Stuart without thinking about it for very long.
This isn't the fashionable take right now. Old Petty is the new toy. The international golf press has been falling over itself with previews and first-look pieces and breathless words about Doak working in Scotland. Castle Stuart, having opened in 2009 and hosted four Scottish Opens, is the older sibling that's no longer getting the headlines. But greatness is greatness, and Castle Stuart is great in a way that Old Petty, for all its strategic interest, is not quite.
I should explain why before anyone gets upset.
Castle Stuart was designed by Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen and opened in 2009. Parsinen was the same man who created Kingsbarns down in Fife, and his fingerprints are all over Castle Stuart in the sense that the routing has the same kind of theatrical staging. Parsinen apparently used to describe Castle Stuart as a theatre, with the Black Isle and the Moray Firth providing the stage. The first three holes play right down beside the firth in what he called the orchestra section. The middle holes climb up to a higher mezzanine level. The closing holes return to the lower shelf for the dramatic finish back to the clubhouse. It's a figure-eight routing in spirit even if not exactly in shape, and it uses every meter of the 1.4 miles of coastline the property has.
I played Castle Stuart in the afternoon and the weather was a different country compared to the morning at Old Petty. The morning had been chilly. By the time I teed off at Castle Stuart it had warmed up into one of those pleasant Scottish afternoons that you only get a handful of in a year. Sun on my back walking down the 1st fairway, the firth glittering on the right, the Black Isle across the water, and ahead of me eighteen holes of what I already suspected was going to be a special round. It was.
I'll start with the views, because they are the headline reason this course is what it is. Castle Stuart has somewhere around ten greens with sky or water as the backdrop, the so-called infinity-edged greens that make the putting surfaces appear to drop straight off into the firth. You stand on certain greens and there's no visible ground behind the flag. It's just hole, then horizon. Photos do not capture this. Until you're standing there with a downhill four-foot putt and the Black Isle floating across the water in your eyeline, you can't really understand what Hanse and Parsinen built here.
The 4th is the par 3 that gets put on every postcard. Downhill, into wind on most days, with the firth wrapping around behind the green. I played it slightly into the wind and missed long, which left me a chip back toward the hole with the water as the backdrop. Nervy little shot. I made bogey but I didn't care. I just wanted to keep looking at the view.
The 7th is where the strategic side of the design becomes obvious. It's a hole where the smart play is the left side of the fairway, even though every instinct on the tee tells you to go down the right because that's where the green appears to be. Trust the design. Go left. The angle in is much better and the green contours that look ready to repel your ball back into trouble suddenly become workable. I went right the first time. I would not do that again.
The 17th is a long par 3 that sits on the upper plateau, into the prevailing wind, with not much in the way of bail-out. It's the kind of hole that exists to test you near the end of the round when you're starting to think about your scorecard. I made bogey. Most amateurs make bogey or worse. The pros at the Scottish Open used to make their share of bogeys here too.
The 18th is the closer and it's a great one. Par 5 cascading downhill back toward the white art-deco clubhouse, with the Kessock Bridge across the firth in the distance. You stand on the tee and the whole property opens up below you. I didn't reach in two but I wasn't supposed to. I laid up, hit a wedge to fifteen feet, missed the birdie, made par, walked off into the clubhouse for a beer.
Now let me say something about the design philosophy that explains why I rank it ahead of Old Petty.
Castle Stuart is the bigger, more dramatic course. The fairways are wider, the visual scale is larger, the holes have more theatrical staging. Old Petty is more restrained, more inland, more about subtle ground game and clever green surrounds. Both are fine ways to design a course. But Scotland deserves drama. You're flying to Inverness, paying premium green fees, walking proper Scottish links land along a North Sea firth, and what you want is for the course to deliver moments that make you stop and just look at where you are. Castle Stuart delivers those moments at least once every three holes. Old Petty delivers them more rarely because it's working further from the coast and trying to do its best work through the ground rather than through the views. Both approaches are valid. I just happen to prefer the approach that puts me on cliff tops looking out at the Black Isle. Sue me.
The other thing about Castle Stuart that hits you only after you've been around it once is how playable it is. The fairways are genuinely wide. You can hit a less than perfect tee shot and still find yourself with a chance. The greens are large and have generous landing areas. Nothing is unfair. This is a course that flatters the average golfer enough to keep them having fun while still asking proper questions of the better player. That balance is genuinely hard to design. Hanse and Parsinen nailed it.
The clubhouse is one of the better ones in Scottish golf. White art-deco styling, panoramic views, an upstairs locker room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the course. The restaurant is good. The pace is unhurried. After our round we sat on the terrace looking back at the 18th green watching the sun start to drop toward the firth and I genuinely didn't want to leave. Some clubhouses have that effect. Most don't.
A practical note on tees. I played from the green tees. Black tees are championship setup and will eat you alive in the wind, which is constant. Don't be a hero. Pick a sensible tee for your handicap and enjoy the day.
A practical note on the walk. The figure-eight routing means there's a properly long walk between the 12th green and the 13th tee. Several earlier reviewers have grumbled about this. I get the complaint but the reward at the 13th green and the views from the upper shelf justify the trek. Drink some water, take your time, enjoy the moment of quiet between holes.
A practical note on the dress code. Smart casual in the clubhouse, no caps, no metal spikes. Standard Scottish links club rules. They're polite about it but they do enforce it.
About the Cabot rebrand. The course is now technically called Cabot Highlands rather than Castle Stuart Golf Links, which is the new branding since Cabot bought the property in 2022. Locals and golfers I've spoken to still call it Castle Stuart. So do I. The 400-year-old castle is still sitting there on the property. The original name made sense. The new name makes commercial sense for the resort but I suspect the old name will outlive the rebrand in everyday conversation. I called it Castle Stuart throughout this post for a reason.
Old Petty will continue to get the marketing buzz over the next year as the official opening rolls out in May 2026 and the international press lines up to write the first impressions. Castle Stuart will sit there quietly being the better course. If you're booking a trip and can only play one round at Cabot Highlands, play Castle Stuart. If you're booking two rounds, do them on the same day with Old Petty in the morning and Castle Stuart in the afternoon, and let the better course be your closing experience.
I'll be back. Probably more than once.
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