What exactly is Donald Ross’s connection to Dornoch?
Ross was born in Dornoch in 1872, just down the road from the flat we rented during our summer there. He walked the links every day, and at first worked for a local carpenter who made the wooden boxes that held the sand that golfers used to make tees. He also learned some greenkeeping and clubmaking, and, after club secretary John Sutherland sent him to the Old Course to work under Old Tom Morris, he returned to Dornoch in November 1893. Sutherland soon hired him as the club’s pro, greenkeeper and clubmaker. Ross in Dornoch absorbed many of the principles of course design that he would bring to the U.S. after he left Dornoch in 1899. He returned from time to time, and while the villagers haven’t always remembered him with great affection-he did leave to make his living elsewhere, after all-still there’s no denying that he was always a Dornoch man.
