chipoat,

Make Dornoch a par 60 if you want.  Nobody will ever break par there again!  Would it make it a better course?  Would it make it more "difficult"?

No.

Remember folks:

1) "Difficulty" is not an ingredient for quality.
2) "Difficult" can't be used to describe a golf course.

Ask it this way.

Would Augusta cease being a great course if they slowed down the greens to where they were in the 1950's and early 1960's? And put the pins where they were then? Scores would go down, maybe way down, to be sure.

Very few older courses can resist scoring of modern pros who are bigger, stronger, on the whole more skilled, putt on better greens and surely have better equipment. Augusta tricks up the greens, the USGA grows rough. Olympia Fields is supposedly not a great course because an excellent golfer at the top of his game shot 8 or so under par.

So what.

These guys truly are good.

The Old Course isn't great because Tiger can eat it up when the wind isn't roaring? It's still great.The golfers are just getting even greater.

Unfortunately, I can't comment on Dornoch specifically.

Generally, though, your premise makes more sense to me if I turn it on its head, at least for courses where "benign conditions" aren't the norm:

Should we really consider great any course that cannot be conquered under benign conditions?  

Tom,

I don't know who you are but man I think you are the new doyen on this site.

You have summed up my beliefs of those courses in four paragraphs, thank you.

Dornoch is in my opinion the best links course in Scotland.

Brian

I've covered the whole "Old Course vs. New Course" thing in my book and on this website countless times previously, but to quickly recap: Tom, the Old Course *is* easy when the wind doesn't blow - at least it is during your first 8-10 times playing the course, when you don't know where all of the bunkers are yet and you can hit your drives without fear. Your first time around, it's entirely possible to get lucky, hit no bunkers off the tee and feel underwhelmed by the architectural experience. But as someone who has played TOC more than 30 times, now, you'll just have to trust me when I say that once you play it enough to get to know it (assuming you've kept an open mind through the entire process), TOC grows on you unlike any course in the world. If that doesn't work for you - i.e. if you have to be able to figure out a course on the first or second pass for you to consider it for greatness - then so be it, but at the end of the day, it really is your loss.

Anyway, re: Dornoch and other courses in predominantly windy areas like it...which is the greater sin: making a course which is too easy when the wind doesn't blow, or making a course which is unplayable when the wind does blow? Of course Dornoch is there to be had in no wind - the greens are big, the fairways are mostly wide, and anyone capable of routinely two-putting from 60 feet on tricky greens is going to be able to suffer most of his mistakes gladly. But even in those conditions, the course retains an incredible amount of strategic and shotmaking interest, to say nothing of remaining just as beautiful as it is in no wind. In a stiff wind, Dornoch becomes quite difficult, but by no means impossible. In contrast, courses like Nairn (with gorse tightly flanking every fairway) or The European Club (with steep, hairy dunes tightly flanking every fairway) lose points with me because if the wind blows and you're not striking the ball crisply, you're going to wind up looking for more golf balls and playing less actual golf. I had no fun at all playing TEC, because my day more closely resembled a mountaineering course than golf - and I'm a decent golfer, at least nominally. Difficulty on a golf course is all well and good, but courses which pursue it to the point of alienating double-digit handicappers can never be truly great (i.e. 10 on the Doak Scale), as far as I'm concerned.

Cheers,
Darren

Tom,
I agree completely.  I too played in The Sinclair Cup and Ithink if you look at the leading scores you could not say it played to easy.  The morning round was in moderately hard conditions but the afternoon round was quite calm.  The leading Net score was +5 and gross was +4, I believe.
The examination of your short game at Dornoch is difficult in any conditions.
#11 was also my downfall.
Foxy was also playing verry difficult with the pin all the way to the right in the front portion of the green protected by the slope.  I t tested both your full shots as well as putting and chipping.
Greatness and toughness are too often confused, challenging and stimulating might be better descriptions.IMHO Dornoch is the best place to play golf in the world.
Cheers
Stan Dodd

Tom,
I too hope to return next year.
For nine holes the first round I thought I was somebody, but the penalty for missing the green on 10 is having one of the toughest shots (for me).  I actually did better after missing #2 than I did on #10. I got up and down twice after missing #2.
I was there for 8 days and played 6 rounds and every round was intriguing.  I thought the course was set up great firm fast but fair.  The rough was  playable, at least you could find your ball.
Did you play the Struie, thoughts?

Darren Kilfara:

I completely agree with you that the bigger sin is making a course unplayable in a strong wind. My favorite place in the world - Ballybunion's Cashen course - is an example of what you cite. It features those steep, hairy sand dunes that become a lost ball nightmare if you are not striking the ball very solid off the tee. Moreover, RTJ built small, often elevated greens that also require very solid approach shots to hit.

While I'm a passionate lover of the place, it isn't hard to see why so many people just find it a frustrating nightmare - perhaps the ultimate example of the sin you spoke about.

FYI, one of the reasons I like going over in January or February is that the grass is dormant and this effectively makes the fairways wider and simply more fun to play.

Honestly, I've always wondered about people raising the question Chipoat did. If most of the time the wind can blow pretty strong, why even worry about the ability to score much better when it doesn't? Isn't is better just to have fun and enjoy those unusual conditions while they last?

Chipoat,

Nothing personal!

Obviously, you are not the first to raise such a question. At the risk of just repeating myself, I just think one should enjoy those benign days on a links.......and trick oneself into thinking you are a better golfer than you truly are.

When things return to normal, it can be a big reality check and thoughts of the course being "too easy" seem hard to imagine.

chipoat

As a fellow member you should be ashamed!  Your premise is OK, but your facts are flawed.

NOBODY has ever shot 66-64 at Dornoch.  The course record is 62 (which as I have described before, was a true fluke), but the next best score is 65.  No pro (including Crenshaw, Watson, Norman (many times) Els, etc.) has done any better than 67 (-3) to my knowledge.  In the Carnegie Shield, the best 2 round qualifying score in the 100+ years of the tournament is about 139.  This year the 4-round club championship was won in 285 (+5), which was an all-time recored.  This year's Sinclair Cup, referred to above, was won with 149.  I've played in it for most of the past 25 years and cannot remember seeing it won with a score under par.  In all these latter cases, the field has included numerous elite players.

That being said, you are right that Dornoch can SEEM to be easy in calm weather, and it is probably true that if there were an Open there--rain or shine--somebody would probably shoot lights out, but......it just ain't happened there, yet..........

I have only played Dornoch 3 times, and there as well as TOC and Cruden Bay, I found the courses easier to play when the wind was high.  The wind guarentees the shape of shots, the openess in front of many greens allows you to play a half swing with a longer stick and run it in,this means you can slow your tempo down which helps hit solid shots,  and the intensity of the conditions forces you to concentrate on what you are doing, I think it forces you to another level.  At Dornoch the par threes were particualrly difficult for me in the high wind because they required a trajectory shot to the green, and there was such slope and depth to the terrain surrounding the greens that a recovery shot was especially difficult.  Under windy conditions you felt like you were engaged in the round, with the course for every moment, you never could allow your mind to drift.  When you get into that frame of mind I think the game becomes easier and more enjoyable.  Probably the most difficult hole for me other than the par threes at Dornoch, in the wind, was the first hole.  A great opening hole, probably the best opening hole I have ever played.  The opening hole at TOC was nostaglic because I felt like I was back in West Texas at some dump course like Kermit CC or Monahans CC, my apologies to the fine people out there.  


Dornoch is great because even though I looked ridiculous I savored the time I left my hotel and car behind and walked across town with my bag to meet my tee time at the course.  IT was a Sunday and walked right by the church knowing full well where I was going I was more likely to find God hanging out there then the people in that building were to find Him in there!
 

Chip

I'll check out the Silver Medal board when I'm up there in a few days and come back with an answer to your question (PS--I'm not sure that 139 is the number, I'll find out).  I will say that I have played in the Shield for almost 25 years and rounds in the 60's have been as rare as hen's teeth--one or two a year, if any, max.  I do remember a year when one stalwart went 66-83, but that is 149, isn't it.......

You are probably right that there are more scores in the 60's than in the past.  I counted 3 of them in this years Club Championship (out of 64 rounds for the top 16 players who made the cut).  You should know that the club is blessed with a surfeit of good local sticks these days two +1 players and and another 2-3 from Scratch-2.

In this years Shield there will be 8 scratch and better players, 32 with 3 or better handicaps, 84 at 6 or below and 150 in single figures (all numbers cumulative).  I'll report back on the qualifying scores if you wish.  I'll be astonished if there are more than 3 individual round scores under par over the 2 days, regardless of the weather.

Cheers

Rich