There is a name etched into the very foundation of golf - carved into the linksland of Scotland as surely as any bunker face or flagstick. Old Tom Morris was not simply a golfer. He was a builder of the game itself. Born in St Andrews in 1821, he became a four-time Open Championship winner, the father of modern greenskeeping, and the most prolific golf course architect of the 19th century.
His story is one of a man who could not be separated from the land he loved. Over a career spanning more than half a century, Morris designed, remodelled, or laid out more than 75 golf courses across the British Isles - with Scotland at the heart of his life's work. From the hallowed fairways of the St Andrews Old Course to the wild dunes of Machrihanish on the Kintyre Peninsula, from the Highland majesty of Royal Dornoch to the dramatic Aberdeenshire coastline at Cruden Bay, Old Tom Morris shaped the Scottish golfing landscape in ways that still resonate today.
This is not merely history. Every round you play on a traditional links course, every time you navigate a strategic bunker, every time you stand on a tee box separated from the previous green - you are playing in a world that Old Tom Morris helped build. His innovations in course design, greens maintenance, and hole routing are the invisible architecture beneath modern golf. Among his many legendary layouts, the Old Course at St Andrews is widely considered the best Old Tom Morris course to play, revered for both its historical significance and its challenging design.
For golfers who cherish the origins of the game, the historic Scottish golf courses designed by Old Tom Morris are not just destinations. They are pilgrimages. In this guide, we explore who he was, how he designed, and which of his iconic courses you should add to your golf bucket list. To find a complete list of Old Tom Morris’s golf courses, authoritative resources are available online, such as the British Golf Museum’s website and golf history archives, which provide detailed documentation and comprehensive listings of his course designs.
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What golf courses did Old Tom Morris design?
Old Tom Morris designed or significantly remodelled more than 75 golf courses throughout his career. His most celebrated Scottish designs include the St Andrews Old Course, Prestwick Golf Club, Royal Dornoch, Muirfield, Carnoustie Golf Links, Machrihanish Golf Club, and Cruden Bay Golf Club, along with dozens of lesser-known but equally treasured links.
Who Was Old Tom Morris? The Father of Modern Golf Course Architecture
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Thomas Mitchell Morris was born on 16 June 1821 in the town of St Andrews, Fife - the very home of golf itself. The son of a weaver, he grew up within walking distance of the ancient links that would define his entire life. By the age of ten, he was already knocking makeshift balls around the streets of the town. By fourteen, he had entered one of golf's most formative apprenticeships.
It was the town, the links, and the coastal winds of St Andrews that first shaped Old Tom's understanding of how golf should be played and how a course should be built. He came of age in a world where linksland golf was inseparable from the natural terrain - where the land itself dictated the game. That foundational understanding never left him.
In 1835, Old Tom began his apprenticeship under Allan Robertson, widely considered the world's first golf professional. Robertson's workshop was the beating heart of golf in St Andrews - a place where featherie golf balls were made, clubs were crafted, and the finest players honed their skills. Morris absorbed everything.
Together, Robertson and Morris formed what many consider the greatest playing partnership of the era. They were reportedly never beaten in a high-stakes challenge match, including a legendary contest for £400 against the Dunns of Musselburgh in 1849. It was also during this period that Morris learned the fundamentals of course management, the importance of turf maintenance, and the art of reading the land.
Their partnership famously ended in 1851 when Morris was caught by Robertson playing the new gutta-percha ball - a direct threat to Robertson's featherie ball business. The falling out sent Morris west to Prestwick, and the course of golf history changed forever.
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Old Tom Morris's Core Design Philosophy
Before Old Tom Morris, golf courses were largely products of pure chance - paths worn by generations of play, shaped by wind, sheep, and the accident of geography. Morris changed that. He brought intentional design to the game without sacrificing the natural character of the land.
His design philosophy was rooted in a deep respect for the existing terrain. He worked with natural contours rather than against them. He located putting greens in natural settings - sometimes in hollows, sometimes on elevated plateaus placed diagonally to the line of play. He carved pot bunkers from existing depressions in the ground rather than imposing them artificially. He retained walls, roads, burns, and other natural features as hazards that added character rather than removing them as obstacles.
This approach - often described as naturalistic course design - is what gives Old Tom Morris courses their timeless, organic quality. They feel like they grew out of the land, not like they were imposed upon it. That is, in many ways, the highest compliment in links golf architecture.
Perhaps Old Tom Morris's most important conceptual contribution to golf course architecture was the idea of the strategic hazard. Before his time, bunkers and other hazards were simply obstacles to be suffered - random features of the landscape that punished wayward shots without any particular logic or design intent.
Morris changed that thinking fundamentally. He was the first to deliberately place hazards so that they required golfers to make genuine decisions. A bunker, in his vision, should reward the golfer who plays around it, challenge the one who takes it on, and punish only the one who ignores it. This is the essence of strategic course design - a philosophy that has dominated golf architecture ever since and that is visible in the work of every great architect who followed him.
He also introduced the concept of yardage markers - visual references on the course that helped golfers understand the distances they faced. Before Old Tom, golfers were largely left to their own instincts. These innovations combined to create a more thoughtful, skill-rewarding game.
One of Old Tom Morris's most enduring contributions was the standardisation of the 18-hole round as the definitive format for golf. While the number of holes on early courses varied widely - some had as few as five, others as many as 22 - Morris played a pivotal role in cementing 18 as the universal standard.
In 1871, he designed Forfar Golf Club as the first course in the world originally conceived with 18 holes from scratch. The ripple effect of this standardisation shaped every aspect of golf's future - from tournament formats to course design to the very way golfers think about a complete round.
Morris was not only a designer but a revolutionary greenskeeper. His tenure as Keeper of the Greens at both Prestwick and St Andrews produced a body of maintenance knowledge that transformed golf course management globally.
He was the first to top-dress putting greens with sand - a practice he reportedly discovered accidentally when he spilled a wheelbarrow of sand onto a green and noticed the turf improved dramatically. He introduced lawn mowers for cutting greens, replacing the uneven results of sheep grazing. He used fertilisers, lime, and compost to improve turf growth. He implemented drainage and irrigation systems, including the drilling of wells beside greens to provide water during dry periods. He widened fairways and defined bunker edges, bringing order and consistency to courses that had previously been maintained largely by nature's own hand. Every one of these techniques remains in use today.
St Andrews Old Course: Where Old Tom's Legacy Runs Deepest
No course is more closely associated with Old Tom Morris than the Old Course at St Andrews. This is the spiritual home of golf - a course with roots stretching back to the early 15th century, host to more Open Championships than any other venue, and the place where Morris was born, worked, and died.
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After his years at Prestwick, Morris returned to St Andrews in 1865 at the invitation of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, appointed as Keeper of the Greens on a salary of £50 per year. He inherited a course that had fallen into significant disrepair through heavy play and inconsistent maintenance. What he did next would define the Old Course for generations.
Morris set about a comprehensive transformation. He widened the fairways dramatically - from roughly 40 yards to as much as 100 yards in breadth. He removed whins, rough, and heather that had encroached on lines of play, giving golfers more angles from which to approach the greens. He returfed and enlarged the putting surfaces, and built entirely new greens for the opening and closing holes. He sank wells beside the greens for irrigation. The result was a course that finally matched the game's growing ambitions.
The Old Course's most distinctive features - its vast double greens shared between outward and inward holes, its strategic bunkers with names like Hell, the Principal's Nose, and the Road Hole Bunker, and the famous Swilcan Burn winding across the opening and closing holes - all bear the imprint of Old Tom's tenure. It was his hand that separated the 1st green from the 17th green, producing the current layout of 7 double greens and 4 single greens that defines the course today.
The Old Course has hosted 30 Open Championships, more than any venue in history, and continues to be played every five years. For golfers visiting St Andrews, this is the ultimate pilgrimage - a round on the same linksland that Old Tom walked, shaped, and loved for more than 40 years of his life.
Prestwick Golf Club: The Birthplace of The Open Championship
If St Andrews is the home of golf, Prestwick Golf Club is the birthplace of professional golf's greatest championship. Founded in 1851, Prestwick was the course where Old Tom Morris first truly came into his own - as a player, a designer, and a visionary.
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Hired in 1851 as Prestwick's first professional and greenkeeper, Morris arrived at a raw piece of Ayrshire linksland and built it into one of Scotland's finest courses. He designed the layout, maintained the turf, ran the pro shop, gave lessons, and organised tournaments. He was, in every sense, the engine of Prestwick's early success.
It was at Prestwick that Morris helped organise the very first Open Championship in 1860 - and reportedly struck the first shot of that inaugural event. He went on to win the championship here in 1861, 1862, and 1864, three of his four Open titles, making Prestwick not only the stage of his greatest professional triumphs but the course most closely tied to his identity as a competitor.
What makes Prestwick special - and what most directly reflects Old Tom's design sensibility - is its unapologetic eccentricity. The course is filled with blind shots, deep pot bunkers, and narrow fairways that demand creativity and imagination rather than pure power.
The famous Alps hole requires a full carry over a massive dune, with the green hidden from view and the yawning Sahara Bunker waiting below. Blind tee shots ask you to commit to a line of play with no visual confirmation of where your ball will land. These elements make Prestwick feel like golf as it was originally conceived - a game of anticipation, local knowledge, and the willingness to trust your instincts.
Prestwick hosted the Open Championship 24 times before its removal from the rota due to crowd management issues. Today, it stands as one of Scotland's most historically significant golf destinations and a course that every serious golfer should experience at least once.
Royal Dornoch Golf Club: The Highland Masterpiece
Set on the Easter Ross Peninsula in the far north of Scotland, Royal Dornoch Golf Club is consistently ranked among the finest golf courses in the world - a course of breathtaking beauty, formidable challenge, and profound historical significance. It is one of Old Tom Morris's most admired creations and the course that most directly influenced the next generation of great designers.
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Golf had been played at Dornoch for centuries before Morris arrived in 1886, but the game was played informally on a strip of links loosely grazed by animals, with no proper greens, no defined fairways, and no real architecture. Club Secretary John Sutherland commissioned Morris to create a formal layout, and what he produced was extraordinary.
Morris used the natural elevation changes and sandy Highland soil to craft holes of exceptional character. Raised greens, natural bunkering, sweeping panoramic views of the Dornoch Firth - these became the hallmarks of the course. The routing followed the natural land without imposing artificial drama; the drama was already there, waiting to be revealed. Morris extended the course to 18 holes in 1889, completing one of the finest links golf layouts Scotland has ever produced.
Royal Dornoch was named Scotland's Best Golf Course at the 2020 World Golf Awards and ranks consistently inside the world's top 15 courses on global rankings lists. For a course that was once so remote as to be largely unknown to the wider golfing world, the recognition is richly deserved.
The importance of Royal Dornoch extends well beyond its own fairways. Morris's work here directly inspired Donald Ross, the Scottish-born architect who went on to design more than 400 courses in the United States - including Pinehurst No. 2 - and who is widely considered one of the greatest golf course architects in history.
Ross grew up in Dornoch, learned the game on Morris's layout, and carried the principles he absorbed there across the Atlantic. The upturned-saucer greens that are Ross's signature, the natural contouring, the respect for the existing landscape - all of it traces back to the lessons Ross learned on the linksland that Old Tom Morris shaped in the Highlands of Scotland.
Muirfield: Old Tom Puts the Honourable Company on the Map
Muirfield, the home of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, is one of the most celebrated venues on the Open Championship rota. It has hosted the event 16 times, produced champions including Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, and Phil Mickelson, and is widely regarded as among the fairest and most rigorous tests of links golf in existence.
Its foundations were laid by Old Tom Morris. When The Honourable Company relocated from Musselburgh to a new site on the East Lothian coast in 1891, it was Morris who created the original course layout and routing that put Muirfield on the map. The course was later refined - most notably by Harry Colt - but it was Old Tom who identified the site's potential and gave it its initial character.
What makes Muirfield distinctive is its routing: two loops of nine holes running in opposite directions, both returning to the clubhouse, ensuring that wind comes from every angle during a round. This was a design principle that Morris had championed throughout his career - returning nines that intersect the prevailing wind rather than simply running into it and back - and at Muirfield it found its most sophisticated expression.
Muirfield is not the most visually dramatic of Scotland's championship links, but it is among the most intellectually demanding. Every bunker is placed where it will most test the thinking golfer. Every green is positioned to reward the correct approach angle. This is strategic design at its most refined - a legacy that traces directly back to the principles Old Tom Morris established.
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Carnoustie Golf Links: The Sternest Links Test in Scotland
Carnoustie Golf Links sits at the intersection of Old Tom Morris's career and golf's deepest history. The Championship Course at Carnoustie is widely considered the toughest course on the Open rota - a merciless examination of every aspect of the game, from driving accuracy and iron play to imagination around the green and the mental fortitude to hold your game together under pressure.
The origins of the course go back to Allan Robertson, who laid out the original 10 holes in 1850 with Morris assisting. It was Morris, however, who extended and developed the course to a full 18 holes in the early 1870s, setting the foundations of the layout that has challenged the world's best players ever since.
Carnoustie's Championship Course features ditches threading through multiple holes, out of bounds pressuring tee shots on several holes, and a closing stretch - from the 14th to the 18th - that is as demanding as any finish in championship golf. The famous Barry Burn meanders through the final holes, claiming countless scores and dreams alike. The perfectly placed pot bunkers have a magnetic, if deeply unwelcome, appeal.
The course has hosted eight Open Championships, most recently in 2018 when Francesco Molinari lifted the Claret Jug. It remains a course where Old Tom's original routing and instinct for challenge are still very much felt, even through the modifications of later designers.
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Machrihanish Golf Club: The Wild Kintyre Masterpiece
Of all Old Tom Morris's original designs, Machrihanish Golf Club may be the one that most completely embodies what authentic Scottish links golf looks and feels like. Located on the remote Kintyre Peninsula on Scotland's west coast, Machrihanish is a course that requires a genuine journey to reach - and rewards that journey with one of the most thrilling and memorable rounds in the game.
Morris laid out the course in 1879 - initially as 12 holes before it was extended to 18 in 1883 - and what he created was something extraordinary. The natural dunes, the rolling linksland, the prevailing Atlantic winds, and the dramatic coastal setting provide the raw materials. Morris simply revealed the course that was already there.
Machrihanish's opening hole - a 423-yard par four known as the Battery - has a legitimate claim to being the best opening tee shot in golf. From the elevated tee, you drive across a corner of the Atlantic shoreline itself, carrying the beach to reach the fairway. Too far left and you are on the sand; too far right and you face a challenging angle to the green.
It is a hole that announces immediately what kind of golf course Machrihanish is: wild, exhilarating, demanding, and completely in harmony with its extraordinary natural setting. Links golf does not get more elemental than this.
The course's contoured greens and rolling fairways feel entirely natural - because they largely are. Morris worked with the land so closely that the design and the landscape are virtually inseparable. Machrihanish is perhaps the clearest expression of his genius for naturalistic architecture.
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Cruden Bay Golf Club: Drama on the Aberdeenshire Coast
Cruden Bay Golf Club is one of the most visually striking golf courses in Scotland - a course of pure drama, set among towering dunes on the northeast Aberdeenshire coast. It was designed by Old Tom Morris in 1899, commissioned by the Great North of Scotland Railway Company to accompany the grand Cruden Bay Hotel being built at the same time.
The course that Morris and co-designer Archie Simpson created is genuinely spectacular. Giant dunes frame countless holes. The routing weaves through natural corridors that give each hole its own character and challenge. Blind shots over dune ridges, tight links fairways, and well-placed pot bunkers demand the full range of a golfer's game.
Despite changes over the decades - including notable work in the 1920s - the majority of Morris's original design remains intact. The railway and hotel are long gone, but Cruden Bay endures as one of Scotland's most celebrated golf destinations, drawing players from around the world who come to experience links golf at its most dramatic. It has been described as golf's best-kept secret on the Scottish northeast coast, and there is real truth in that.
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The St Andrews New Course: Old Tom's 1895 Classic
In 1895 - the same year he designed Crail Golfing Society's Balcomie Links - Old Tom Morris created the New Course at St Andrews, offering the town a second championship-quality links alongside its famous elder sibling.
The New Course has never attracted the same global attention as the Old Course, but among knowledgeable golfers it is deeply respected. Some commentators have argued it is actually superior to the Old Course strategically - tighter, more consistently demanding, and with fewer of the eccentricities that the Old Course's age has bequeathed. Morris designed it with clear intentions: this was to be a course that tested skill through precision and positioning rather than through the accumulated quirks of centuries.
Playing the New Course alongside the Old Course is one of the finest two-round combinations in Scottish golf. Set side by side on the same links land, they offer dramatically different experiences of the same fundamental terrain - a testament to the range of Morris's design vocabulary.
Hidden Gems: Lesser-Known Old Tom Morris Golf Courses in Scotland
Old Tom Morris's most celebrated designs are widely known and rightly revered. But his portfolio extends far beyond the headline names - into lesser-known corners of Scotland where his work is equally meticulous and the golf experience often remarkably pure.
Established in 1889, the Old Course at Moray is among the finest examples of Old Tom's original work in Scotland's northeast. The layout is noted for its natural flow, firm coastal turf, and intelligent use of the prevailing winds off the Moray Firth. Gorse-lined fairways and subtle doglegs demand both precision and creativity from every class of golfer. It is a course that exemplifies Morris's hallmarks - working with the land, building challenge through positioning rather than length, and creating a setting that feels entirely right.
Founded in 1890, Tain Golf Club was designed entirely by Old Tom Morris and sits nestled on the edge of the Dornoch Firth in the Scottish Highlands. It offers a classic out-and-back links experience - undulating fairways, well-placed bunkers, and deceptive greens that reward local knowledge and punish complacency. Often overshadowed by its spectacular neighbour Royal Dornoch just a few miles up the coast, Tain is a genuine hidden gem - a place where you can play Old Tom Morris's original vision for a fraction of the cost and with a fraction of the crowds.
Askernish Golf Club on the Isle of South Uist is perhaps the most remarkable story in Old Tom Morris's entire portfolio. He laid out the course in 1891 on an extraordinary piece of natural links terrain in the Outer Hebrides. Over the following decades, the course fell into neglect and obscurity, eventually becoming virtually unplayable.
Then, in the early 2000s, a team of golf historians and architects rediscovered Morris's original layout and undertook a careful restoration, reopening the course in 2008. What they found - and revealed - was extraordinary: a wild links course set among some of the most dramatic duneland in the British Isles, completely untouched by the over-manicuring that afflicts many modern courses. Askernish is as close as any golfer can get to experiencing golf as Old Tom Morris played it and intended it to be played.
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Crail Golfing Society's Balcomie Links - designed by Old Tom Morris in 1895 - is set on the dramatic eastern tip of the Kingdom of Fife, with the North Sea providing a constant, bracing backdrop. The club itself is the world's ninth oldest, and the course reflects its ancient heritage: short, quirky, and utterly charming.
The Balcomie Links is not a course that will challenge scratch golfers with length or power demands. It will, however, test judgment, imagination, and the ability to control a golf ball in coastal wind conditions. Morris crafted holes that use every feature of the headland - the rocky coastline, the rises and falls of the links, the exposure to the prevailing easterlies - to create a round that is memorable, enjoyable, and deeply rooted in the tradition of Scottish seaside golf.
The Old Tom Morris Trail: Following a Legend Across Scotland
For golfers who want to immerse themselves fully in Old Tom Morris's legacy, the Old Tom Morris Trail offers the ultimate Scottish golf pilgrimage. Created by Bonnie Wee Golf and featuring 18 courses across Scotland - each with direct design or restoration ties to Old Tom - the Trail runs from Machrihanish on the remote Kintyre Peninsula in the west to Carnoustie near St Andrews in the east, taking in the full breadth of Scotland's extraordinary links landscape.
The official Trail includes many of the courses we have covered in this guide: St Andrews Old Course, Prestwick, Royal Dornoch, Muirfield, Carnoustie, Machrihanish, Cruden Bay, Crail Golfing Society, Tain, Moray, Nairn, Askernish, and more. Each course on the Trail comes with a commemorative coin that golfers collect as they play - a tangible record of a journey through the history of golf.
The full trail can be completed in roughly two weeks of intensive travel, though most golfers prefer to break it into multiple trips, tackling a region at a time. Whether you play all 18 courses or cherry-pick the ones that appeal most to you, following the Old Tom Morris Trail is an experience that will fundamentally deepen your understanding and love of golf.
Hole19 is the perfect companion for these rounds. With GPS distances, hole maps, live scoring, and the ability to track and review every shot, the Hole19 app brings a layer of information and engagement to your game that makes each historic round even richer. Whether you are navigating the blind shots at Prestwick, plotting a safe route around Carnoustie's Barry Burn, or simply soaking in the majesty of Royal Dornoch, having accurate distances and a digital scorecard in your pocket ensures you are playing each Old Tom Morris course to the fullest.
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Plan Your Historic Scottish Golf Trip With Hole19
If Old Tom Morris's historic Scottish courses have inspired you to plan a trip, the Hole19 app is your essential companion for every round. With detailed course maps, precise GPS yardages, shot tracking, and live scoring, Hole19 gives you everything you need to play each historic links with confidence and awareness - whether you are measuring a pot bunker carry at Prestwick, plotting an approach on Carnoustie's closing stretch, or navigating Royal Dornoch's famous raised greens.
Before you travel, use Hole19 to research the courses on your itinerary, review hole layouts, and set your goals for each round. On the course, track your distances, monitor your stats, and keep score across all your rounds in one place. After your trip, review your performance, identify the areas of your game that the Scottish links challenged most, and use those insights to inform your practice and improvement.
And if you want to take your game improvement even further, explore CORE Golf - Hole19's dedicated practice app that uses result-oriented drills and game area-focused practice plans to help you build the skills you will need most on the demanding terrain of Old Tom Morris's classic links courses. From fairway woods off tight lies to bump-and-run chip shots to managing your game in the wind, CORE Golf can help you build the complete links game that these extraordinary courses reward.
The history of golf is written in the fairways and greens of Scotland. Old Tom Morris put pen to paper. Now it is your turn to read it.
Mafalda Gil