Royal Dornoch's 21st Century Masterplan: How One of the Jewels in Scotland's Links Crown Plans to Build For The Future
With a £13.9M clubhouse already underway and new courses and facilities planned as part of a major redesign, Royal Dornoch is aiming to further establish itself as a must-visit destination.
Golf in the Scottish Highlands has a long and storied past, but right now it’s the future the people there are thinking about, with the region seeing significant new developments across multiple locations.
At Cabot Highlands near Inverness, work on Old Petty, a Tom Doak design, is approaching completion with preview play scheduled for August ahead of a grand opening in 2026.
Further north, and without any doubt the most ambitious of all, Royal Dornoch Golf Club — sitting on terrain where golf has been played for more than 500 years, and self-styled as the home of the world’s most northerly championship links — has revealed the initial concepts of a comprehensive masterplan to substantially expand one of Scotland's top golfing destinations, and safeguard the club’s future for locals and visitors alike for the next 50 years and beyond.
The historic club, which was founded in 1877, currently offers two tracks: the Championship Course and the Struie Course.
The Championship ranks in the Top 10 on GOLF's list of Top 100 Courses in the World and 2nd on Golf Digest's International list, while Struie is currently ranked among Scotland's top 50 links courses. But all that may be enhanced if new plans can get the planning permission and financial backing to make them a reality.
Royal Dornoch's Bold Vision for the Future
After a detailed tender process, led by a panel of nine people, Royal Dornoch has hired American design-and-build firm King Collins Dormer Golf Course Design (KCD) to develop its masterplan.
The plan, announced in a presentation to members last week, comes on the back of the commencement of work on a new state-of-the-art clubhouse in 2024 and Royal Dornoch's acquisition of 50 acres of additional linksland in a six-figure deal.
While the masterplan is still being finalized, and will be subject to both finance requirements and planning permission, it will encompass both renovation of existing facilities and creation of entirely new ones with a view to enhancing the club experience for local members and global visitors alike in the coming decades.
Breaking Down Dornoch’s Masterplan
A new £13.9 million clubhouse forms a key component of Royal Dornoch's transformation and is already under construction, with completion expected later this year.
As part of the redesign plans unveiled to members in last week’s presentation by KCD, the Struie Course will also undergo a complete renovation alongside two new proposed courses — an entirely new 18 on the newly purchased linksland as well as a new 18-hold par-3 course — as well as a four-hole par-3 loop and a practice facility to rival to the best in the world.
The plan also includes two Himalayas putting courses, a kids course that can be routed into the grains of the practice facility and a novel approach to bunkering which aims to make Dornoch’s bunkers distinctive, even unique, while ensuring that they are developed to be sustainable and withstand weather erosion.
Rob Collins, Principal Designer at KCD, said that the new practice facilities “shall endeavor to be considered amongst the world's finest”, pointing out that it will be double the size of the practice facilities at Augusta National, will include members-only areas and will allow players to practice every shot in the canon to improve their links strategy and enjoyment.
He also said that the redesigned Struie course will “seek to no longer live in the long shadow of the Championship Links”.
The proposed additions would effectively expand Royal Dornoch from a two-course club to a four-course destination, including the Championship, the Struie, the new course and the new 18-hole par-3 course.
Another key part of the play is to address operational needs with a proposed central location — a Dornoch “outpost” — from which club staff will be able to manage the redeveloped Struie Course and the new 18-hole course. It also provides for upgraded maintenance facilities, staff housing, expanded parking and — with one eye on future revenue streams — potential club-owned lodging on site.
The Design Team Behind the Vision
The project marks the first UK venture for King Collins Dormer Golf Course Design, a firm which has been gaining recognition for creating distinctive golf courses that deliver high quality at competitive costs.
The team consists of Tad King (Managing Director of Construction), Rob Collins (Principal Designer), and Trevor Dormer, who joined after working as a lead associate and shaper for Coore & Crenshaw on projects including Cabot Cliffs and Cabot St. Lucia.
Their portfolio includes Sweetens Cove near Nashville and Landmand in northeastern Nebraska, which opened in 2022 to positive reviews and where Landmand owner and developer Will Andersen paid glowing tribute to KCD:
“What my family and I had envisioned for this course was exceeded ingeniously by the work King-Collins performed. Rob and Tad made our dream their dream. We will always consider them more than just business partners, they are family!”
In his presentation at Royal Dornoch last week Collins acknowledged the project's significance for the firm:
“We acknowledge the gravity of undertaking a plan that seeks to help one of the world's greatest clubs secure their ideal version of the future.”
KCD and Dornoch’s Unique Approach to Bunkering
Rob Collins’s graduate thesis addressed the environmental impact of golf course design, and the project plan he and his team has proposed at Royal Dornoch has paid particular attention to erosion and sustainability.
This is especially apparent in the proposed construction of bunkers that tick multiple boxes for both club branding, player experience and environmental future-proofing.
Many links bunkers use the revetted face approach that will be familiar to almost all golf fans, even if they’ve never set foot in Scotland, due to their prominence in television coverage of the Open Championship each summer at the likes of the Old Course at St Andrews and Royal Troon.
The KCD team plans “a bit of a departure” from the revetted faces that are seen on many links courses.
The thinking is to tick at least three boxes in these new bunker constructions.
Make them sustainable far into the future, well-equipped to withstand the erosion that is such a permanent consideration on all links courses
Make them maintenance-friendly for the team on the ground at Royal Dornoch
Make them distinctive, even unique, and from there provide downstream benefits of building the Royal Dornoch brand far into the future
Imaginatively taking Scandinavian studies to combat erosion, Trevor Dormer highlighted the proposed approach at Dornoch.
“We've looked at some studies in Norway where they build up the walls of their houses with big thick stacks of sod … We were thinking about how to create bunker styles that were uniquely their own, not seen anywhere else, and just things that we want to try and see how it will work in the bunkering as far as the erosion and the aesthetics …
“A lot of times what we try and do for our bunkering is we try and make it its own entity, its own character. We try really hard to give it its own identity so that you know each bunker that you're in by a certain key feature.”
Part of a Wider Strategy for Golf in the Highlands
With Royal Dornoch scheduled to host the Curtis Cup in 2028, these developments could significantly enhance the Highlands' appeal as a golf destination.
The expansion plans at Dornoch are not happening in isolation, and instead align with broader efforts to position and promote the Highlands as a premier golf destination where golf travellers might extend their stays rather than making brief stopovers at single courses.
At the recent PGA Show in Orlando, Royal Dornoch collaborated with nearby Cabot Highlands and Nairn Golf Club under the VisitScotland banner to promote Highland golf internationally, particularly to the American market.
Neil Hampton, Royal Dornoch's general manager, explained:
“Golf is the main driver of the economy in Dornoch and the surrounding area, but we believe there is scope for further growth which would be advantageous to the wider Highlands area.”
Hinting at the benefits of a cluster effect, he added that the development project “would further enhance the reputation of the Highlands as a must-visit and must-stay destination.”
Many golf visitors to Scotland focus their trip around Fife, the location for the home of golf, the Old Course at St Andrews, as well as a wide range of other premium courses — including 10 in St Andrews alone.
Fife’s top dog status will likely never be challenged, but the Highlands is picking up a real head of steam to establish itself as a regional destination in its own right.
As Hampton puts it: "We see the Highlands as second only to Fife as a golfing destination in Scotland."
Speaking at the time of that PGA Show visit in March, Paul Mills, general manager at Nairn Golf Club, said:
“We want visitors to make [the Highlands] their base and tour operators are becoming more aware of the fantastic range of golf courses we are blessed with.
We are seeing real momentum building in terms of the Highlands as a golfing destination... We encourage golfers from home and abroad to make the area a destination and not just a stop on a tour.”
Timeline of Work: What's Next for Royal Dornoch?
A number of improvements are already in progress at Royal Dornoch — work is well underway on a new £13.9m clubhouse, which was given the go-ahead in 2023 and has previously been slated for a November 2025 opening date.
Installation of a new irrigation system for the Struie Course, which was estimated to cost £1.5m, has also begun.
However, the timeline for the broader development masterplan remains fluid pending financial modelling and funding as well as securing the necessary planning permissions from local authorities.
As Gary Bethune, the captain of Royal Dornoch, stressed in his introduction to the presentation, the plan is a lot more ambitious than just improving faciltiies for the present membership.
He said (our emphasis):
“The brief asked for blue sky thinking and what Royal Dornoch might look like in 50 years’ time, and the facilities that we could provide for every age, ability and desire of a golfer and anyone else who may have an interest in golf.
This is not just for us, this is for our future generations.”
He added:
“This is just the beginning of the process. [These are] concepts and ideas that will need refined during the design process, and what we’re showing you is what we believe is what we asked for and [KCD] took the brief to its limits.”
In terms of what happens next, the key factors include planning permission and costings.
“There’s an awful lot to do before we can put a spade in the ground,” said Bethune, “and even with the smoothest run-in it will be at least a year and probably a bit more away … We have no timescale. Our thinking was for however long it was going to take to get what is right for Dornoch.”
Whenever it does get the go-ahead in terms of secured funding and planning approval, the scale of the work will be significant but there is a strict stipulation on the level of impact on the facility. The brief’s bright red line was that at all times during the development work, 18 holes will always be open and available so that impact on members is minimized.
One thing that’s almost certain is that the 150th anniversary of the Royal Dornoch club in 2027 will coincide with some of the most ambitious plans of any golf club around the world.
Overall, all those in charge at Dornoch seem intent to safeguard the future of golf at its iconic course for many decades and generations to come.
And when golfers from San Francisco, Sydney or Shanghai sit down in the 2060s to plan their once-in-a-lifetime trip, the work being done at Royal Dornoch in the 2020s should put it high on the list of their must-play destinations.
Thanks for reading.
Shane