Nairn Golf Club (Championship)

Golfers might be temped to bypass Nairn on their way north to Royal Dornoch (ranked second on our list) or the expanding Cabot Highlands development, but if they do they’ll miss one of the country’s purest links. The holes run primarily east-west astride the Firth of Moray over ground that’s level but rumpled and studded with clumps of gorse and a mix of bunkers that are both revetted and artistically shaped with fescue edges under the recent direction of British architect Tom Mackenzie. Old Tom Morris expanded the course shortly after it was first built, but Nairn should equally be considered a Braid design—he remodeled the links twice, adding tees and new bunkers, and built the ninth, 10th and 11th holes in previously unused land on the west end of the course. Nairn hosted the 1999 Walker Cup, won by Great Britain & Ireland.