Cabot Highlands
From a golf standpoint, the Scottish Highlands can understandably get overshadowed by one of the game’s most storied pockets further south: St Andrews and the East Fife region.
But the Highlands — famously home to Loch Ness — now has a strong 1-2 punch of its own with Cabot recently adding the Tom Doak-designed Old Petty course to its existing Castle Stuart layout on the scenic Moray Firth.
The Cabot brand and founder Ben Cowan Dewar have built a strong reputation for developing multi-course golf destinations, with Cabot Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida being the most notable, and Cabot Highlands is now well-positioned as the definitive jumping-off point for a golf getaway to the remote, raw and rugged Highlands.
How to get to Cabot
From a travel standpoint, it doesn’t get easier.
Cabot Highlands is just minutes from Inverness Airport, which sees up to one million passengers per year. And heralded courses like Royal Dornoch, Nairn and Brora are an easy day trip from the property, which is best known for its 400-year-old stone castle that was completed by the third Earl of Moray in 1625.
Cabot Highlands
Castle Stuart is a sight to behold
The original Castle Stuart course at Cabot Highlands is ranked among the finest in the world, with a design from Gil Hanse and Mark Parsinen that plays dramatically along cliffs overlooking the Moray Firth and has holes that skirt the water’s edge. The elevation changes and views – out toward the town of Inverness – are as good as they get in Scotland.
Castle Stuart is a relative newcomer in the historic world of Scottish golf, having opened in 2009. But the major step in making the Highlands more of a destination for golfers looking for a multi-day trip was the addition of Old Petty.
Laid out by Doak and associate Clyde Johnson on gently rolling terrain that used to be mostly farmland, Old Petty was built to play as a links course – embracing the ground game on “wrinkly terrain” with uneven lies.
“Some people may want to disqualify it from being a ‘true links’ because we had to move a lot of dirt around and manufacture it. We’re still looking for it to play like that,” Doak said during a recent round at Old Petty. “You have to take into account the contours around the green, because you’re not just flying it within 10 feet of the hole.”
There are old stone walls, holes that play along the bayfront, and a historic red-roofed Bothy (a farm or fishing shed that used to provide respite from the wind and weather along the rugged coastline). Today, the Bothy offers a different type of respite, serving as a halfway house for golfers. And Old Petty actually plays closer to the castle than the neighboring Castle Stuart course does, including an elevated tee shot at the par-3 third hole that Doak says can seem “uncomfortably close.”
Doak spent a year in St Andrews immediately after college and said every golf course he’s created during his career was influenced by that experience. That inspiration is especially evident at Old Petty, where he not only wants golfers to have fun but to think their way around the routing, including how they might do better the next time with a little course knowledge.
The coastline at Castle Stuart
A look at Cabot’s on-site lodging options
There is on-site lodging for golfers playing multiple rounds, with the Castle Cottage, the Golf Lodge, and the Farmhouse all accommodating up to eight people. The art deco-style clubhouse – in the style of Royal Birkdale – is a stunner in its own right, with panoramic views of the coastline and Cabot’s two 18-hole layouts. The views from the bar and seating area on the top floor of the clubhouse are phenomenal, but perhaps only somewhat better than the almost unrivaled sightlines from the showers one floor lower in the men’s locker room.
Cabot has built a brand around providing special golf experiences, with courses crafted by the game’s best architects in remarkable locations. Cabot Highlands delivers that in Scotland, the so-called ‘Home of Golf,’ but just in a slightly less-heralded part of the country.
At least for now.
Cabot Highlands