If you still have the final round – Royal Dornoch

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If you still have one last round to play…now there's a question.

At the risk of being too pessimistic, this happens to us all.

If you're “lucky” enough to know that this is it, you can do some planning.

If we're going to do this, it has to be good and unusual. We didn’t want to fly anywhere or play anywhere with a man-made lake or buggies or “USGA greens” or other insignificant things.

We want to head to the coast where the ground will allow the ball to roll, directly or sideways into the bunker, where we can occasionally drop the ball 20 yards away and enjoy the next 10 seconds as things get more good.

We want to be able to have tee shots off the first tee and be able to hit the ball from anywhere, and we want to be able to enjoy a 50 yard walk to one of the most beautiful views on earth after two holes – spectacular Links golf course, endless holes.

We want the chance to hit a different club in the bag, we want to be stuck in a bunker, we want to ignore the starter's sole instruction to make one of the par threes a four and then pay the price by hitting the hole through Over the green.

Tom Watson, an honorary member with Ben Crenshaw, described Royal Dornoch as “the most fun I've ever had on a golf course”. When he first visited in 1981, he originally planned to play just one round, but stayed for 36 holes.

Dornoch pretty much meets all my golf course needs. I don’t need a signature hole to remind me of the place, I just want a series of holes that flow and change, where there’s no obvious cave-in and I could sit on the bench six times and think to myself, there’s nothing It doesn't get much better than this.

I don't need to be told what the “thrill” of the greens is for them to be pure and fast, and if I come to the beach to play golf, then I want to see the sea as often as possible.

I hope there are at least a few holes that I know I can't play correctly, like 14 and 17, but I can still make bogeys easily. I want to be able to putt from anywhere, and sometimes I want to see the odd putt miss the break and end up sinking into more sand.

I wanted a reminder that I can't really play golf, but I'm decent enough. But, most importantly, I want to be able to leave the court loving every bit of it.

Ideally the gorse and sunshine will come out, if not it's no big deal as you could be playing in 50mph winds and biblical rain (I've done that) and still enjoy it all .

As for who will be a part of all this, there's no right or wrong answer.

The most obvious one is paying for family – first on my list is always my late father, who I last played with in 2004.

But we've seen enough of each other's golf, him on the right and me on the left, so in fact I'd probably be keen to have him turn with the other golf geeks I spend most of my time with.

There was nothing any of us could have imagined, and even 18 holes in this beautiful corner of the Scottish Highlands wasn't going to change anything.

It has to be some kind of hero status, and it's almost certainly a collection of characters from the 80s, a decade I've been trying to move away from.

Thinking along the lines of Ken Brown or Sandy Lyle, perhaps Paul Way might be tempted to travel from Kent to the Highlands?

At the top of the tree will be Seve and Olly (who have to be on different teams) and when I finally roll the dice, one of them will end up teaching me what a satisfying chip sounds and feels like.

Read more: SO/Sotogrande Spa & Golf Resort – A great choice for winter golf