Brora golf course is a fine test of your golfswing. It's also a test of your resilience, stamina and concentration. Paradoxically its also the fairest golf course I ever played. Uniquely the better your golfswing the harder the course gets. That's unusual but entirely proper. At Brora everybody, locals and holiday makers alike, can enjoy their golf game regardless of age, gender, althleticism or ability.
Watch the short video slide show and you'll see a selection of sights from the course. They show the stunning scenery on view, including rainbows. (Brora gets more rainbows than anywhere I've ever been.)
The course is built on a narrow strip of sandy soil - like all the best courses - between the farming land and the sea. It goes out for 9 holes and then back for another 9. The turning point is the simply stunning par 3 Sea Hole. It looks gorgeous but turns into a frightening challenge with the wind from the left and the sea on the right.
Always the backdrop is the North Sea on one side and the heather and fern covered hills on the other.
Watch out for the dummy Owl beside one of the greens. Apparently he's there to frighten away the sea gulls (we should get one for our garden I'm sure).
Notice the electric fences around the putting greens - there to keep the animals off the prepared surfaces.
And look for the cows quietly grazing by the burn at the short par 3. Elsewhere on the course is a flock of sheep:-)
The course is built on Common Good Land. Local people have the right to graze their animals on it and despite numerous attempts by the golf club, refuse to stop doing it.
To those of us brought up on manufactured and manicured golf courses with cart paths and half way houses Brora seems to be another world. With land the way God laid it out, the wind, the sea, the animals and inevitable cow pats and sheep droppings, this is the antithesis of what we know.
But it's the way golf was born. A game of the people played on land useless for anything else where both money and score are meaningless. What counts is the way you play the game - the spirit of friends hitting a little white ball, finding it and then hitting it again in the home of golf you didn't know about.
Watch the short video slide show and you'll see a selection of sights from the course. They show the stunning scenery on view, including rainbows. (Brora gets more rainbows than anywhere I've ever been.)
The course is built on a narrow strip of sandy soil - like all the best courses - between the farming land and the sea. It goes out for 9 holes and then back for another 9. The turning point is the simply stunning par 3 Sea Hole. It looks gorgeous but turns into a frightening challenge with the wind from the left and the sea on the right.
Always the backdrop is the North Sea on one side and the heather and fern covered hills on the other.
Watch out for the dummy Owl beside one of the greens. Apparently he's there to frighten away the sea gulls (we should get one for our garden I'm sure).
Notice the electric fences around the putting greens - there to keep the animals off the prepared surfaces.
And look for the cows quietly grazing by the burn at the short par 3. Elsewhere on the course is a flock of sheep:-)
The course is built on Common Good Land. Local people have the right to graze their animals on it and despite numerous attempts by the golf club, refuse to stop doing it.
To those of us brought up on manufactured and manicured golf courses with cart paths and half way houses Brora seems to be another world. With land the way God laid it out, the wind, the sea, the animals and inevitable cow pats and sheep droppings, this is the antithesis of what we know.
But it's the way golf was born. A game of the people played on land useless for anything else where both money and score are meaningless. What counts is the way you play the game - the spirit of friends hitting a little white ball, finding it and then hitting it again in the home of golf you didn't know about.
