To Dornoch and Back

Raleigh accountant Richard Urquhart was the driving force in the early 1960s to develop a private club and residential community in Pinehurst. He loved the golf-centric environment of Pinehurst but wanted a venue not for the masses but successful North Carolina businessmen and power brokers to gather away from home for long weekends and holidays.

“What could be better than a good club centrally located for nearly all of us, ideally suited for golf, horses, hunting or just plain socializing?” Urquhart asked in a 1962 letter to charter members.

Richard Tufts, who had traveled to Scotland extensively and made the long trip north to Dornoch several times, suggest to Urquhart that he name the club Royal Dornoch, and in fact the real estate development around the golf course was named Royal Dornoch Golf Village.

Because of the club’s appeal across the state, Urquhart preferred a broader approach and christened it the Country Club of North Carolina. It opened in 1963 with a golf course designed by Ellis Maples and Willard Byrd, which would be named the Dogwood Course when a second course followed in 1981 and was named the Cardinal. CCNC was one the original members of Golf Digest’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses and was the site of the PGA Tour’s 1971 and 1972 Liggett & Myers Match Play Championship (won by Dewitt Weaver and Jack Nicklaus) and the 1980 U.S. Amateur (won by Hal Sutton). The Dogwood Course was renowned for its back nine, with seven holes wrapped around Watson’s Lake.

Vestiges of the club’s original Scottish connection have remained for 60 years.

Lake Dornoch sits to the left side of the fourth hole of the Dogwood Course, and the main road through the community is called Lake Dornoch Drive. There is a restaurant in the club called the Dornoch Grille.

The relationship between CCNC and Dornoch began in 1971 when a Dornoch member visited and brought a plaque and hole flags to commemorate the friendship. “With this message of greeting goes our hope that Dornoch, Sutherland, and Dornoch, North Carolina, may continue to have close and increasingly friendly relations for many years to come,” reads the plaque signed by Dornoch captain W.B. Alford.

There was an informal series of couples visits to both clubs dating to the late 1990s, but the union took on a formal approach when CCNC member Ziggy Zalzneck and Dornoch member Roly Bluck became good friends after meeting during one of Zalzneck’s trips to Dornoch. Bluck was visiting Pinehurst in 2008, and Zalzneck drove him to Raleigh to visit Urquhart, who was failing in health (and not far from his death in October 2008).

“Mr. Urquhart was dressed in pajamas but had his CCNC blazer on. I thought that was fabulous,” Zalzneck says.

They talked about golf, Pinehurst and Scotland, and when it was over, Urquhart put his arm around Zalzneck and said, “Ziggy, I want the club to have matches with these guys. Will you work it out?”

Twelve players from Dornoch traveled to CCNC in 2011, and the matches have been held since, alternating venues (the 2020 and ‘21 matches were cancelled because of Covid-19). They play a Ryder Cup format and at stake is an antique, wooden putter now named for Bluck, who died in 2014.

“We look forward to the matches every year,” says Dornoch General Manager Neil Hampton. “Visiting Pinehurst is lovely. It’s so different for us. We have to adjust our game, the ball doesn’t run and bounce like it does at home.

“Each club seems to have the advantage on their home course. Does somebody win? Yes. But it’s a friendship thing. It’s a social event with golf involved. It’s all about like-minded people enjoying a bit of fun.”

Adds Dornoch club captain David Bell: “Royal Dornoch members relish the annual contest with their friends from Country Club of North Carolina. While they may leave some of that friendship behind in their quest to win the Roly Bluck putter, it is soon restored over one (or several) glasses of whisky in the bar.

“This is a competition which embodies the comradeship and sportsmanship which make golf such a great game.”

Dornoch member and former club captain Hamish Macrae has played in every match since 2011 and believes the series improves each year.

“The trips are all about catching up with old friends, making new friends, experiencing true Southern hospitality and having competitive matches played in the best spirit,” he says. “The Dornoch members have enjoyed visiting Donald Ross’s house beside the third green of the No. 2 course, the Tufts Archives and having the opportunity to play other courses of renown in the area designed by Donald Ross.”

He noted that this year’s visit in late September coincided with a ceremony in the Village of Pinehurst with Patrick Murray, Provost of Dornoch Community Council, and Pinehurst Mayor John Strickland signing an agreement honoring Ross and strengthening links between the two communities. The agreement includes “providing awareness and tourism opportunities surrounding the sport of golf, the history of golf course architecture and the work of Donald Ross.” There will also be opportunities for Dornoch’s award-winning Historylinks Museum and the celebrated Tufts Archives in Pinehurst to co-operate under the banner “Donald Ross: Birthplace to Workplace.”

“Our relationship with CCNC is centered around Donald Ross and the Pinehurst area,” Macrae says. “The recently developed relationship between the Royal Burgh of Dornoch and Pinehurst will provide even more opportunities for the two communities to share their history through golf and friendship.”

Lee Pace is a freelance golf writer who has written about Sandhills area golf for four decades and is the author of club histories about Pinehurst Resort & Country Club, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Forest Creek.