Old Petty at Cabot Highlands: The Doak One
Updated: Oct 12
Booking Old Petty was one of those things I almost talked myself out of. The preview window only ran through August and September of 2025 and you had to commit to playing Castle Stuart the same day, walking only, £190 a round, and the trip up to Inverness from anywhere outside Scotland is not a casual undertaking. I sat on the booking page for about ten minutes telling myself I'd wait for the proper opening in May 2026. Then I clicked book. I'm glad I did.
I got there in the first week of September. The clubhouse was still half a building site, the bothy that's going to be the snack hut on the 5th wasn't operational yet, and you could tell from the way the maintenance staff were moving around that everyone was in opening-prep mode. None of that mattered. The course was already very nearly the real thing.
Why did I want to play this so badly? Because Tom Doak doesn't build new courses in the British Isles very often. He's only done two before this one. The Renaissance over in East Lothian back in 2008, which I would love to play and almost certainly never will because they've gone members-and-guests only with no green fee bookings, so unless you know somebody you're locked out. And St Patrick's Links at Rosapenna in Donegal, which opened in 2021 and which I played a couple of years ago and which is, in my opinion, one of the best courses to be built anywhere in the last twenty years. So the question with Old Petty was simple. Which Doak were we going to get? The slightly muted Renaissance Doak or the genuinely transcendent St Patrick's Doak?
Spoiler. It's the St Patrick's Doak.
Quick context for anyone new to Cabot Highlands. The resort is about fifteen minutes from Inverness airport on the south shore of the Moray Firth. Cabot bought the property in 2022, when it was just Castle Stuart, the 2009 Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen course that's hosted four Scottish Opens, including the one Phil Mickelson won in 2011 the week before he won the Open at Muirfield. Castle Stuart is firmly in the world top 100. Adding a second course was always going to be a reputation gamble, because if you build something mediocre next to a world-class layout you've actually devalued the whole property. So they hired Doak. Hard to argue with that pick.
I played Old Petty in the morning and Castle Stuart in the afternoon. Same day. The morning was chilly. Properly chilly, the kind of Scottish September where you finish the front nine wishing you'd brought one more layer. By the time I was on the back nine the temperature had started to climb, and by the time I teed off at Castle Stuart in the afternoon it had turned into one of those genuinely nice days that you only get a handful of in a Scottish summer. I made the right call doing them in that order. If you've got the legs for two rounds in a day at Cabot, do Old Petty first. The morning chill suits a thinker's course. Castle Stuart with the afternoon sun and the sea in front of you is the better closing experience.
I played from the green tees. I'd recommend that to almost anyone. The black tees are championship setup and in the wind, which is constant here, they will absolutely punish you. There's no shame in moving forward. Doak's whole design philosophy is that the course should be enjoyable for everyone playing the right tees, not a pure test only the scratch boys can survive.
OK, what's the course actually like.
First impression as you walk to the 1st tee is how natural the place looks. I knew before going in that Doak's team had moved a lot of earth, scraped back the topsoil to expose the underlying sand, brought in more sand from elsewhere on site, shaped the contours by hand. I knew this and I still walked the property thinking it had been there for two centuries. That's the Doak magic. Every course he builds has this quality of looking older than it is, and Old Petty is another textbook example. You cannot tell where the natural land ends and the human work begins. I asked one of the marshals on the 7th about which features had been there before, and he pointed at a specific bunker complex and a couple of mounds and said those, and the rest is built. I would not have guessed right.
The fairways are wider than I expected from a Doak course. Not American-resort wide where you can just throw any line off the tee, but wide enough that you don't feel choked out. The point is that the angle into the green is what matters. You can be in the fairway and still have a brutal approach if you're on the wrong side. You can be just off the fairway on the right side and have a much easier shot in. Old Petty rewards thinking about your tee shot in a way that a lot of modern courses don't bother with anymore.
Now the greens. This is where the course earns its reputation. Doak has said publicly that he spends most of his on-site time working on greens and the surrounds, and you can feel every minute of that work. Each green has multiple shot options, multiple ways to die, and learning the right play takes a few rounds. Some greens you should fly all the way onto. Some you should land short and let feed. Some you can putt from twenty yards off and roll up to the hole. Some you should bump from a tight lie. There's no formula. You stand over each approach and have to think about it. This is what Scottish golf is supposed to be and it's what you don't get on most modern courses where every green is a soft target with one obvious play.
I three-putted more than I'd like to admit. Twice I lagged from forty feet and ended up with a more dangerous five-footer than the original putt because I read the slope wrong. The greens are not unfair. They're just full of information you have to learn. Coming back for second and third rounds is half the point of a course like this.
Some specific holes that stuck with me.
The 3rd is a downhill par 3 with the actual 400-year-old Castle Stuart tower house sitting just left of the green. Doak has said in interviews that he routed it deliberately close to the historic structure, "uncomfortably close" was his phrase. He's right. You stand on the tee and the castle is in your peripheral vision and you can't really focus on the shot. I hit a wedge that came up short and rolled off the front. Walked up to my ball and stood there for a minute just looking at the castle. It's one of those moments that makes a round.
The 4th has the bay sitting hard right and ready to swallow anything you push or slice. We donated two balls to the Moray Firth between us. I expect this hole takes more golf balls per year than any other on the property. Aim left. Trust me.
The 5th has a small red bothy, which is an old stone shelter, sitting just right of the green. They've kept it as part of the routing and it's going to be a snack hut once the course officially opens. The hole is a risk-reward where you can bail right over a massive bunker for a blind shot at the green. I went for it. I should not have. I made bogey from the kind of position you don't want to be in. Lesson learned.
The 10th is where the coast finally comes properly into view. Par 5, blind approach over a big mound, with the Moray Firth opening up behind the green. After a front nine that's mostly inland, the 10th hits you. I stood on top of the mound looking down at the green with the sea behind it and just thought, OK, here we go.
The 15th was the most disorienting tee shot of the round. Par 5, you can't really see the fairway from the back tees, and the right line is supposed to hug the bay on the left to set up the second. There's even an old washed-up boat on the property that they've kept as an aiming point. First time playing it, I had no idea where I was supposed to hit. I bailed right and made what I deserved.
The 17th is a short par 3 with a green that Doak has said was inspired by the second green at the Old Course at St Andrews. Small, with serious surrounds that reject anything off-line. Should be a birdie chance on paper. In practice, with the wind off the firth, you can walk off here with anything between a 2 and a 6.
The 18th finishes back at the clubhouse and the routing has the 1st and 18th crossing each other on land that used to be the driving range. It's borrowed from St Andrews, where the 1st and 18th share fairway. Some people will think it's gimmicky. I think it's elegant. The 18th green is closer to the clubhouse than it would have been with a conventional routing, and the crossing fairways are more interesting to walk than two parallel ones would have been.
If I had to compare Old Petty to something a reader might already know, my closest reference is the Montgomerie course at Carton House in Ireland. Same kind of inland-links character, same sort of moved-earth-but-looks-natural quality, same rolling open feel without dramatic coastal cliffs doing the heavy lifting. The big difference is that Old Petty is much more interesting to play than the Montgomerie. The greens are better, the strategic decisions are sharper, and Doak has more touch with the small details that make a hole memorable. If you've played Carton House and thought the Montgomerie was fine but a bit one-note, Old Petty is what that style of design looks like in the hands of someone working at the absolute top of his craft.
A word on timing for anyone planning a trip. I think the best time to see Old Petty isn't actually September, even though that's when I played it. It's high summer. Mid-July to early August, when the hay around the property is tall and yellow and the bright green fairways paint these vivid stripes through it. That contrast between the golden hay and the green grass is what an inland Scottish links is meant to look like, and we caught it just on the edge of that window. By September the hay had started to lose its colour. Plan your trip for July if you can. The course will look better than the photos most people are going to start posting once it officially opens in May.
Some honest notes from preview play. The course was still settling in when I played it. Some areas hadn't fully grown in. Conditioning will be better by the time the official opening rolls around. The walking-only requirement was great for the experience but if your knees aren't what they were, factor it in. It's a proper walk through hilly ground. There was no halfway house yet so we had to bring our own snacks. The bothy on the 5th will solve that.
Compared to Castle Stuart, the two courses are different enough that you should absolutely play both. Castle Stuart wins on views, drama, and the cliff-top moments along the firth. Old Petty wins on green design, strategic interest, and the intimacy of playing past 400-year-old stone with the castle peeking through almost every gap. Castle Stuart is the round you'll photograph more. Old Petty is the round you'll think about more on the drive back to the hotel. Mine took two hours and I spent the whole time replaying the round in my head.
Old Petty came in at No.34 in Golf World's Scotland Top 100 rankings while still in preview, with the suggestion it could rise into the top 20 once it matures. I think that's about right. Top 20 in Scotland is top 50 in the world give or take, and that feels like the level Doak has hit here.
I'll be back. I want to play it in July. I want to take a proper crack at the greens with what I learned the first time. I want to sit on the 18th tee with a 4-iron in my hand and actually commit to the line down the left, not bail right like I did in September. The sign of a great course is one you finish wanting to play again immediately. Old Petty is that.
Read also other reviews from the same trip:
Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty Old Petty
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