Hole 4 | Valley
A straight drive or even a slight right to left from the tee that carries to the ridge is ideal. With a bit of luck the sloping left to right fairway will take your ball down to the flat for an ideal line in. Top tip – slightly to the right is a better option rather than the left where there is thick rough and trees can block your 2nd shot forcing you to play out sideways. The ideal tee shot leaves an iron to a 2-tier green guarded by bunkers left and right.
|
Tee |
Yards |
Par |
Index |
|
White |
379 |
4 |
12 |
|
Yellow |
369 |
4 |
12 |
|
Red |
358 |
4 |
2 |
Straths and Glens
The name of this hole comes from its striking topography. As you stand on the tee, with the 5th hole climbing to the right and the 3rd rising to the left, you’re quite literally playing through a natural valley — a classic Scottish strath.
Though not as commonly used in the Moray dialect, the Scots language has a rich vocabulary for valleys, each term carrying centuries of geographic and cultural meaning. A strath is a broad river valley, and the name features in some of Scotland’s most iconic place names — Strathspey, for example, famed for its whisky trail and the winding River Spey; Strathmore, the source of Scotland’s best-known bottled water; and Strathclyde, the region surrounding Glasgow.
Another word you’ll hear across the Highlands is glen — as in Glen Affric, The Great Glen, or Glenmore. Both terms describe valleys, but there’s a subtle difference: glens are generally wider, U-shaped valleys carved by glaciers, while straths tend to be narrower and more steep-sided, shaped by the erosive power of rivers over time.
Craigelachie Bridge, Strathspey (Link)