Golf Course Architecture - Issue 64, April 2021

21 TEE BOX Coul Links project near Dornoch), the site, although virgin duneland, is not classified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). It additionally used to be home to a golf course, founded in 1890 and known successively as the Nigg, Cromarty and Castlecraig Golf Club. This should, in theory, make planning permission easier to come by, though only time and the actual filing of an application will say for sure. Mackenzie told GCA : “Our home farm is about five miles away from this site, which is known as Calzean Farm. I bought the land in March 2019, basically with a view to extending our family business. The purchase wasn’t straightforward, because the site is zoned for industry – for expansion of the port – but eventually we worked it out. We’ve ended up getting a farm that is pretty good agriculturally, but what excites me more is that it gives us a chance to diversify – there are a number of derelict houses on the land that I thought could be turned into holiday homes. I was aware that there’d been a golf course there – the locals still refer to that land as ‘the golf course’, and I thought, ‘that could be something that would help make the tourism work’. My dad is a golfer, and I play a little, and I have a few contacts in the golf world, so I got a few of them to come and take a look. I began to realise it was a pretty special site.” It was a visit to Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania that cemented Mackenzie’s thinking. “I have a god-daughter in Tasmania, so when I was out there I visited Barnbougle, and that galvanised me even more to get it done,” he said. “My friend Michael Goldstein from New Zealand mentioned it to a number of people he knows in the industry, and we started to get some quite serious interest.” The dunes on the site are no longer mobile: the sand that fed them was subsumed in the industrial site when it was built in the 1970s. The site has been viewed by a number of major international golf course architects, all of whom felt the site had the potential to yield world-class links golf. It is understood that, should the project proceed, the design will be entrusted to a world-class architect. Sources close to the architect in question said: “Robert Mackenzie’s land has the potential to produce a golf course that would be a compliment to Scotland and to golf. Both will benefit if his dream comes true.” Founded in 1890 as a nine-hole course, Castlecraig was extended to 18 holes in 1907. The course became popular because of regular visits by the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet to the nearby port of Invergordon. It ceased to exist in the early 1960s, but it is believed that, should this project go ahead, some of the old green sites will be reused in the new course. Mackenzie said: “I’m a local born and bred, and I love this area. For fifty years, that land has been zoned for industry, but nothing has happened, and it has resulted in the area going really downhill. I don’t see the industry bringing anything tangible to the table, and I have an opportunity to do something that will transform Nigg, diversify the local economy beyond farming and industry, and build a sustainable economy. After 50 years of industrial ownership, the land is back in the hands of a local who doesn’t have aspirations to develop more industry, but to redevelop it in a way that will really support the area.” Photo: Robert Mackenzie The site is located next to the Port of Nigg and the northern terminal of the historic Cromarty-Nigg ferry