A Season in Dornoch

Oct 7, 2024 6:23 PM

Author:Lorne Rubenstein

A Season in Dornoch

In 1977, Lorne Rubenstein, an avid golfer, travelled to Dornoch in the Scottish Highlands. Young and adrift in life, he was profoundly affected by the experience. As he writes, 'My week in Dornoch introduced me to a place with which I felt a connection. A week wasn't living there, but it was enough for Dornoch to imprint itself on my mind.'

Twenty-three years later, in 2000, now an established golf writer, Rubenstein returned to Dornoch to spend an entire summer. He rented a flat close to the Royal Dornoch Golf Club and set out to explore the area on many levels.

Rubenstein writes about the melancholy history of the Highland Clearances, which have left the beautiful landscape sparsely populated to this day. He writes about the friendly and sometimes eccentric people who love their town, their golf and their single malt whisky, and who delight in sharing them with visitors. But most of all he writes about a summer lived in a community where golf is king and the golf course is part of the common lands where townspeople stroll of an evening. Rubenstein is able to return to thinking of golf as play, as opposed to a game of analysis and effort.

A Season in Dornoch is an affectionate portrait of a place and the people who live there, a fascinating look at golf and the spirit and skills it calls forth, and a perceptive and ultimately moving memoir of one man's quest to experience again the pure love of sport that he knew in his youth.

Reviews

Rubenstein gives the reader a feel for what makes the appeal of the Highlands so enduring. He brings the place and its people to life

—— Tom Watson, five-time British Open champion

One of golf's most gifted writers has done every fan of the game a great and entertaining service

—— James Dodson, author of Final Rounds

Unbearably poignant. Simpson neatly captures football's key appeal, the way it can restore the simple certainties of childhood. These men are now postmen, pensioners, disabled, successful, travel agents and the seemingly lost. But they talk with equal wonder about their greatest season

—— The Last Word

A welcome reclamation of Wilkinson's success... breaks the mould in exploring team-building. As Simpson so wistfully explains, we shall probably never see their like again... Clearly written by a fan.

—— Juliet Jacques , New Statesman

Excellent book

—— Yorkshire Post

This excellent book evokes what increasingly seems like a golden age

—— Choice

A fantastic book about Leeds United and that era... beautifully written detective work

—— Radio Leeds

Fascinating

—— Yorkshire Radio

Highly recommended

—— Yorkshire Evening Post

Quality interviews, a fund of anecdotes... An illuminating portrait of an era that already seems as distant as the 1970s

—— Backpass

[Moore] entertainingly unravels the complexities of the relationships within the peloton

—— Richard Williams , Guardian

One of Bike Radar’s favourite books of the past 12 months

—— Bike Radar

Moore unearths a dazzling array of detail through interviews and anecdotes, telling a tale that holds suspense even for those who know the ultimate outcome of this epic battle. As racing books go, Moore’s book just might be “the greatest ever"

—— Kent Petersen , Outside Magazine

The measure of a great book is a great start.Richard Moore’s introductory anecdote in Slaying the Badger set a new standard in cycling literature

—— Cycle Sport

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