Cruden Bay Golf Club - Scotland

Cruden Bay runs over and through the saucers in the giant sandhills of the Aberdeen coast of northeast Scotland, next to the small fishing village of Port Errol. The course, originally designed by Old Tom Morris, underwent a substantial redesign in 1926 by Tom Simpson. It was perhaps Simpson's crowning achieve­ment, and he included the first, eighth, and 18th among his selection of the finest 18 holes in Great Britain and Ireland. Before World War II, Cruden Day was one of the great golf resorts of the north and the rival of Turnberry and Gleneagles. The truly grandiose Cruden Bay Hotel, owned and operated by the Great North of Scotland Railway and built of pink Peterhead granite, opened in 1899, the same year as the course. This "palace in the sandhills" never reopened after the war and was eventually demolished. Not far from the course on a high dune ridge is another palace, known as Slains Castle. The magnificent ruin provided the inspiration for Dracula's castle to author Bram Stoker, who frequently wandered the beach at Cruden Bay.

Royal Dornoch Golf Club - Scotland

Royal Dornoch is the farthest north of the great championship courses of Scotland, located by the village of Dornoch 60 miles north of Inverness on the east coast of Sutherland, and 600 miles north of London. A classic links course festooned with gorse, Dornoch runs out and back along Embo Bay, with seven miles of creamy beach leading to Littleferry and Loch Fleet to the north and out to the pale blue mountains beyond. The golf club was founded in 1877, although golf has been played in Dornoch since 1616, with Sir Robert Gordon writing in his History of Sutherland, published in 1630: "About this toun there are the fairest and largest links of any pairt of Scotland, fit for archery, Golfing, Ryding, and all other exercise; they do surpass the fields of Montrose or St Andrews." Dornoch's most famous native son was Donald Ross, born in a house on St. Gilbert Street in 1873. In 1898, Ross emigrated to Boston, and was eventually hired by James Tufts to design Pinehurst No.2, where the crowned and exquisitely sculpted greens reflect Dornoch's influence. Dornoch was a popular resort for the upper crust of English golfers in the early years of the 20th century but then settled into relative anonymity. It has been rediscovered in recent years, with many golfers making the pilgrimage that Herbert Warren Wind described in his 1964 New Yorker article, "North to the Links of Dornoch."