EDITOR’S NOTE: How can a no-frills golf trip to the ancient Highlands help one better understand the modern problems in which professional golf finds itself mired? Golf Digest Senior Writer Joel Beall discovers many provoking answers in his book, Playing Dirty: Rediscovering Golf’s Soul in Scotland in an Age of Sportswashing and Civil War. The following is excerpted with the permission of Back Nine Press. Shop the hardcover edition, 256 pages, at back9press.com/beall.
DURNESS GOLF CLUB IS OUT of the way, and that’s the point. It’s as far northwest in Scotland as the mainland will go, and we know this thanks to a sign that greets us in the car park that says as much. In this country that’s speckled with golf courses seemingly around every corner, the nearest golf course to Durness is a long 60 miles away down a frighteningly narrow road. The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times, and a variety of Viking artifacts were discovered in a cave not long ago. Yet the current population of the village hovers around 350, and the natural beauty nods that the land has not been spoiled or tamed by man. There are a few inns, a pub that’s open in the summer and a youth hostel near a cave. It’s the type of town you go to when you don’t want to be found.
The Durness links is young by Scottish standards, having opened in the 1980s under the vision of three local enthusiasts, yet it possesses the timeless veneer and charm typically found in James Braid’s storied designs. The North Atlantic commands attention on almost every hole, its steel-blue waters providing ambience as the links weaves through a tapestry of windswept marram grass and ancient, polished rock, a landscape conducive to only golf and the occasional grazing sheep, though wire fences thoughtfully protect the greens and tees from wandering flocks. Just 100 players call it home, including the handful of Highlands members who make their trips once or twice a year through the countryside. In keeping with its modest scale, the club operates with two employees, one of whom is Alistair Morrison.
He is a prodigy. At 32, he has already been the head greenskeeper for a decade strong. He apprenticed at Brora, the Highlands gem roughly two hours southeast, the type of post that bestows the next opportunity of his choosing. Morrison, who grew up in Durness, decided to go home.
“It was always in the back of my mind,” Morrison says. “When I saw it come available, I jumped at it. That I was young and naïve helped.”
It’s his dream position, working at the course that introduced him to the game, but it is hard work. Morrison’s days begin before dawn, when the dew clings to the fescue and the only sound is the distant crash of North Atlantic waves. From early March through late October, he is tethered to these nine holes—mowing greens, hand-cutting cups as the sun climbs higher, repairing divots and bunkers battered by coastal winds and hackers, and trimming the native grasses that frame each hole. Between maintenance runs, he answers emails, updates social media and coordinates with visiting groups. During peak season, 14-hour days are the norm. While others might call it a thankless position, Morrison sees the effort as an extension of himself—though there are moments when even he questions the wisdom of being a one-man army at the edge of the world.
“There’s definitely attachment to it, but it requires all or nothing,” Morrison says. “There aren’t many people in the part of the country, yet we’re the only thing in roughly two hours in any direction, so we cover a lot of area. We get more traffic than you think, and you have to justify to visitors why they decided to visit.”
The weight of responsibility settles heavily on his shoulders. It can be trying in ways that scratch deeper than the surface, wearing grooves into both body and spirit. When the mowers break down—and they always seem to choose the most inconvenient moments—he has to transform himself into an impromptu mechanic, hands growing calloused from tools that weren’t meant to be part of his daily ritual. Despite being the man in charge, a title that should perhaps shield him from certain tasks, he finds himself tending to duties well below his station. Nothing pushes him closer to the edge of frustration quite like having to bend down, again and again, to pick up discarded cigarette butts—each one a small reminder of others’ thoughtlessness, each one stealing a piece of dignity from work he otherwise holds sacred.
It can be taxing in ways that accumulate like layers of sediment, building pressure over time. The physical labor alone would be enough to test anyone’s resolve, but being constantly exposed to the mercurial Scottish elements does a particular kind of number on the body. The wind carries salt and bite, the rain seeps into bones, and the rare sunny days demand their own toll in sweat and sunburn. Each season brings its unique challenges, writing its story in aching joints and weather-worn skin.
Why Durness, why home, when almost any club would hand him a blank check for a job not as taxing?
When your profession transforms into your passion—or perhaps it’s the other way around—the lines between work and life blur until they become nearly indistinguishable. You can’t simply leave work at work; it follows you home like a shadow, filling your thoughts during dinner and staying with you until your head finally hits the pillow. Even then, it can keep you from finding peace in sleep, as your mind races with tomorrow’s tasks and unsolved problems from today.
It can be testing in ways that few outside this world could truly comprehend. No one really knows the full measure of work and time Morrison pours into Durness—the pre-dawn starts, the missed family moments, the physical toll that accumulates like interest on a debt that can never quite be paid off. This reality sometimes leads to quiet moments of doubt, when he can’t help but wonder if all the effort, all the sacrifice, all the pieces of himself he’s invested in this place are truly worth it.
GRAND EXPOSURE: The North Atlantic Ocean commands views on most holes.
It’s toward the end of the season, and anyone who’s spent time on a grounds crew can testify, even the most ardent lover is ready for a separation at summer’s end. The course can become a skin that you’re unable to peel off. Morrison can’t because he is all Durness has got. “It becomes a part of you, right? Good and bad,” Morrison says. “This is some of the best scenery in the world, but it takes effort not to let it become normal.”
So the question’s worth asking: Why Durness, why home, when almost any club would hand him a blank check for a job not as taxing? He doesn’t require much time to respond.
“Other clubs, they’re sort of a conveyor belt, you know? They get you in, move you through, move you away,” Morrison says. “Here, nine-hole courses don’t get the respect they should. They get downgraded unnecessarily. Durness proves that wrong. There’s pride in doing that. There’s pride in what this is, and where it is, at least to me.”
Morrison continues to list several links to punctuate the idea, although the point has been made. His words trace the delicate threads connecting ambition to purpose, success to meaning.
Other clubs may extend their hands, offering paths paved with prestige and promise, but they lack something essential, something that speaks to the deepest chambers of his heart. It’s written in the way his eyes soften when he surveys the grounds at dawn, in how his shoulders square against the challenge of each new day, in the pride that fills the spaces between his words when he speaks of this place that has become not just his work, but his calling.
