Why this iconic Scottish course wants to ban cows and sheep

Rumpled ground and ruminants.

Ask an avid golfer about Brora Golf Club, in the Scottish Highlands, and they’re bound to mention both.

Home to a highly regarded links, Brora doubles as grazing land for livestock. Its distinctive features include tussled fairways and greens ringed by electric fences to keep sheep and cattle off.

For many visitors, the animals are central to Brora’s charm. But locals often take a less romantic view.

Brora members, in particular, who play the course year-round, are well-acquainted with the downsides of holes that serve as pasture. And in a recent vote, they came down firmly: time to rid the course of beasts with cloven hooves.

“We are very much aware that there are people who see the sheep and cows as an integral part of the Brora experience,” says past club president Andy Stewart. “But as locals, we are also probably more attuned to the impact those animals have than are people who play the course just once a year.”

The livestock ban, which will require court approval before it is enforced, was not a snap decision, Stewart notes. To better understand it, a century-plus of context is required.

Founded in 1891, Brora operated as a 9-hole club until the early 1920s, when the noted architect James Braid redesigned the course into a full 18. The land, owned by the Duke of Sutherland, fell under Highland law which required that it be shared with crofters, the rough Scottish equivalent of tenant farmers. Those crofters tended horses and, as decades passed, an increasing number of cows and sheep. As early as the 1910s, the club mounted the first of several campaigns to set aside the property for golf only. But those efforts came up short. In the 1960s, electric fences were installed around the greens, and life and golf went on, bringing other changes.

For one thing, Stewart says, the livestock at Brora grew larger and more plentiful, with a population of some 25 beefed-up cows and a sheep count that swelled to some 250—several times more than there had once been. By 2017, when Stewart assumed the club presidency, the club’s relationship with the crofters had become strained. In the eyes of many members, the crofters were allowing more animals on the land than the shared-property rules allowed, while violating a prohibition against feeding their livestock on the course. (An attempt to reach Scotland’s Crofting Commission, which regulates and promotes the interests of crofting in the country, was not immediately successful).

The resulting problems were unsurprising. They ranged from trampled bunkers to hoof-prints in fairways that worsened in the winter when rain softened the turf, among other unpleasantries. Cows are cool as on-course extras. They’re less delightful when your ball lands in their dung.

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“There have been many times when members, myself included, have been out on the course with shovels at five in the morning,” Stewart says.

In 2019, the club determined that enough was enough. It dug into its coffers and purchased the land. Soon after, Covid hit. But with lockdowns in the past, the membership revisited the livestock issue. When the ballots were tallied, around eight weeks ago, the decision wasn’t close.

More recently, as word of the vote has leaked into the ether, reactions have been mixed. On Golf Club Atlas, the online architecture forum, one commentator worried that the course would become less playable if sheep weren’t around to trim the rough. Stewart says that isn’t a concern. The club has purchased new maintenance equipment that is more than capable of filling in.

“The animals do not do as good a job as some people think,” Stewart says. “Probably the reason no clubs are rushing to put sheep on their own courses.”

Besides, the livestock ban is not a done deal. The crofters will still have a legal say, and barring a settlement, the matter will be adjudicated in Scottish land court, most likely six to nine months from now.

If Brora gets its way, Stewart understands that the club might hear some gripes. But among golfers who play the course the most, he is confident that those will be minority voices. There are too many upsides to being free of livestock, including the potential to add fairway bunkers from Braid’s original design that were never built out of fear that they’d stomped into ruin by ruminants. The goal, Stewart says, is to present Braid’s work in its full glory for members and visitors alike.

“This is one of the world’s great links and it has always been our wish to get our course back,” Stewart says. “We want to play to greens that don’t have electric fences, and without special rules like what do you do if your ball winds up in cow shit. They don’t do that at the Masters or the Open Championship.”