This year’s Walker Cup is at St Andrews, September 2-3, with the 50th edition of the famous fixture taking place at Cypress Point in California 2025.
Thereafter, the list of American venues reads as follows: Bandon Dunes, 2028 (after the match goes back to even years in 2026), Oakmont 2032, and Chicago Golf Club 2036, all of which is prompting a series of questions as to which GB&I venue is playing host in 2026.
For now, the best guess is Royal Dornoch, the links which is described as follows in the Shell International Encyclopedia of Golf: “Given a less remote setting, Royal Dornoch might easily have housed an Open Championship.”
How the American golf cognoscenti would love it were the Walker Cup to be held in this highland haven — and not least because of the Pinehurst connection. Donald Ross, who was born in Dornoch in 1872 and died in Pinehurst in 1948, designed some 500 courses in the U.S., with one of his most celebrated feats that he added a series of Dornoch-style crowned greens, slopes and run-offs at Pinehurst No 2.
Intriguingly, it was because of Donald Ross that America’s Lee Porter was playing his first competitive event in 18 years at last year’s Senior Amateur Championship in Dornoch. This former PGA Tour professional finished second behind Mike McCoy, a member of the 2015 U.S. Walker Cup team, while there were two other Americans and a Canadian in the top 10.
Rather like President Joe Biden revels in his Irish background, so American golfers feel thoroughly at home at Royal Dornoch. What with such major champions as Ben Crenshaw and Tom Watson having spread word about their respective visits to the links, 700 of them recently seized the chance to become overseas members. Today, 20-30 Americans have homes in the area.
None among them probably has invested more in the town than Todd Warnock, a Chicago-based investor who played the links with friends in 2008 and has been besotted with everything that Dornoch has to offer ever since.
Meanwhile, plans for a new clubhouse for Royal Dornoch took a step in the right direction a week or so ago when the membership agreed to go along with the extra £1 million (about $1.244 million) plus it will take to complete a building which was previously priced at £10 million.
After transforming the old courthouse into the best restaurant in town, Warnock became the owner/operator of the Links House Hotel, a former church manse which dates back to 1843 and sits beside the present clubhouse. Four years later, he added a period annex to the establishment. The design he wanted was what he got, and he was heartily praised by the locals for standing his ground against the Scottish government and Historic Environment Scotland for their “poor taste and senseless government intractability.”
As far as the Dornoch captain is concerned, the development would work wonders for the town. Not only would it give visitors good reason to stay put in the area for longer, but it also would offer employment opportunities for youngsters who have few options but to head south.
Sutherland county ramblers who are hardly short of rambling territory have submitted a series of objections to what they see as an American takeover of a prized stretch of coastal wilderness. However, with Dornoch no less of a golfing community than, say, St Andrews or Carnoustie, most would back the golf contingent to come out on top.
Meanwhile, plans for a new clubhouse for Royal Dornoch took a step in the right direction a week or so ago when the membership agreed to go along with the extra £1 million (about $1.244 million) plus it will take to complete a building which was previously priced at £10 million.
You take a look at the plans and, at first sight, the sandstone building is nothing if not formidable. Yet, as is often the case with the latest picture of an offspring or a favorite pet, it looks a whole lot better at the second time of asking. It is Dornoch through and through, and those who have experienced the magic of the sandstone homes and 700-year-old cathedral will not have been surprised to learn that the architects, Keppie Design of Glasgow, trawled the town in their search for inspiration.
To name one more thing which will have been receiving more than the odd mention in R&A discussions about the venue for that ’26 Walker Cup, Dornoch is “closer” than it used to be.
Up until 1979, it would take two hours to get from Inverness to Dornoch, but from ’79 to ’91, a trio of bridges were built across the Beauly, Cromarty and Dornoch firths, reducing the journey to 45 minutes.
So stunning is the scenery that to cross those bridges any faster would be a travesty.