Is a Golf Trip to Scotland Worth Planning Around?
What golf in Scotland really costs, how the St Andrews ballot works, when to go, and why no golf tour is sold on this site.
The Old Course at St Andrews is closed on Sundays. That single line sits in the notes on St Andrews Links Trust's own published green fee card, and it tells you more about golf in Scotland than any brochure will. The courses are municipal, the rules are old, and the calendar decides far more than your budget does.
Before anything else, one thing needs saying plainly, because it changes how you should read the rest of this page. This site does not sell a golf tour. There is no green-fee bundle here, no caddie booking, no clubs-and-coach itinerary. Every tour in this roster is a sightseeing day trip or a multi-day touring package, and not one of them includes a round of golf. What follows is planning information, gathered because people keep asking the question, not a pitch for a product that does not exist.
Is the reputation actually earned?
Yes, and the numbers behind it are unusually concrete. VisitScotland counts more than 550 golf courses in a country you can drive across in a day, ranging from championship links to nine-hole village courses that charge less than a cinema ticket.
St Andrews alone runs six 18-hole courses plus the nine-hole Balgove, all managed by one trust, all walkable from the same small town centre. That density is the real draw. You are not chasing tee times across three counties; you are choosing between seven courses inside one postcode.
The Old Course also carries a requirement most visitors miss until late. To play it you need a current handicap certificate, capped at 36. The other courses in the group do not ask for one.
What does it actually cost to play?
Green fees at St Andrews Links move in three tiers across the year, and the gap between them is wide enough to reshape a whole trip. These are the published adult rates per round, with the shoulder and low-season figures in brackets.
| Course | Adult, high season | Shoulder / low season |
|---|---|---|
| Old | £340 | £240 / £170 |
| Castle | £180 | £125 / £90 |
| New | £150 | £105 / £75 |
| Jubilee | £150 | £105 / £75 |
| Eden | £75 | £55 / £38 |
| Strathtyrum | £55 | £40 / £28 |
| Balgove (9 holes) | £15 | £8 |
Two things jump out. The Old Course in low season costs roughly half its summer rate, which is a bigger saving than most flight-shopping will find you. And the Old Course is the only course in the group with no under-16 discount: a teenager pays the full adult rate there, while the New Course charges them £75 against an adult's £150. Rates are reset each April, so price the current card rather than this one.
Getting on the Old Course is a separate problem from paying for it. Most visitors go through the daily ballot, entering a couple of days ahead in a group of two to four and waiting on a draw. There is no ballot for Sunday play, because the course is shut. Advance reserved times exist but are allocated far in advance, and by mid-season they are usually gone.
Add the green fee to the rest of a Scotland trip and the total climbs fast. Our breakdown of what a week in Scotland adds up to covers the non-golf half of the bill, and the guide to what a Scotland package actually costs does the same for organised touring.
If the golf is where your money is going, the touring around it does not have to be expensive. The 5-day Ultimate Highland Adventure runs hostel-style at a fraction of the cost of a hotel package, which frees up budget for tee times. No golf is attached to it, and none is implied: it is simply the cheapest way to see the country between rounds you book yourself.
When should a golf trip actually happen?
High season on the Links Trust card runs from mid-April to roughly the third week of October. Shoulder pricing covers the back end of October, and low season carries November through March. Play in that low window and the Old Course drops to £170, though fairway mats may be in operation on any of the courses during low season, which some golfers accept happily and others find ruins the point.
Midges are worth understanding rather than fearing. Scotland's midge season runs from late May to mid-September and peaks through July into early August, and it is worst on the west coast and in the northwest Highlands in calm, humid, overcast air. The Scottish midge forecast tracks daily risk area by area. Exposed east-coast links land like Fife and East Lothian is breezier and far less affected than an inland Highland glen, so the golf itself is rarely the part of a summer trip that suffers.
Daylight is the underrated variable. Late May and June give you light well past 9pm in the north, which makes two rounds in a day genuinely possible. By late October the light is gone by mid-afternoon and a second round stops being realistic.
What do the non-golfers do?
This is where most golf trips quietly fall apart, and it is worth solving in advance. St Andrews itself holds the ruins of its cathedral and castle, both run by Historic Environment Scotland as ticketed properties with seasonal hours. The cathedral site opens daily through the summer months and drops to a Friday-to-Monday winter pattern with a much earlier last entry.
That seasonal pattern matters more widely. Scotland's right of responsible access covers open land and inland water, not buildings or the historic properties in state care, so castles and cathedrals run their own ticketed hours regardless of how open the countryside feels. The same applies to the sites on our castle tours round-up.
A full-day trip out of Edinburgh also fills a golf day neatly for anyone not playing, and the Loch Ness and Glencoe run is the highest-volume option on this list by a wide margin.
Where a Scotland package fits, honestly
None of the multi-day packages on this site are golf products. One of them does pass through St Andrews: the 8-day Scottish Dream itinerary reaches the town on day 6, paired with Glamis Castle, on the run down to Edinburgh. That is a coach stop with time to walk the town and see the links from the outside. It does not include a tee time, a green fee, or clubs.
For a golfing traveller, that is still useful in one specific way. If half your party plays and half does not, a touring package handles the non-golf week properly, and you book your rounds separately around it. The other packages in the multi-day line-up on this site run west and north instead, into Skye, the Hebrides and Orkney, well away from the classic links belt.
If you would rather drive yourself between courses, the comparison of self-drive against guided coach touring covers what changes, including the passing-place etiquette that catches out first-timers on single-track Highland roads.
So is it worth planning a trip around?
Worth it if you will genuinely play three or more rounds, can travel in shoulder or low season, and are happy to build the itinerary around tee times rather than the other way round. The saving between July and November on the Old Course alone is larger than most people's flight cost.
Not worth it if the whole plan hangs on one bucket-list round at St Andrews. The ballot can say no, Sunday is out, and a trip that collapses without a single tee time is a fragile trip. Better to treat the golf as the best possible bonus on a Scotland itinerary that stands up on its own, and to pick the month that suits the rest of the trip first.
None of the three below is a golf product, and none includes a tee time. They are the itineraries that stand up on their own if you book your rounds separately: the coach package that passes through St Andrews on day 6, the island route that runs the other way entirely, and a single guided day out of Edinburgh for whoever is not playing.
Do you need a handicap certificate to play the Old Course?
Yes. St Andrews Links Trust's published green fee card states that golfers must hold a current handicap certificate with a maximum of 36 to play the Old Course. The other courses in the group, including the New, Jubilee, Castle and Eden, do not carry that requirement.
Can you play golf in Scotland in winter?
On most St Andrews Links courses, yes. All of them except the Castle Course are open daily through the year, with the Old Course closed on Sundays as always. Low-season green fees run at roughly half the summer rate, and fairway mats may be in operation during that period, which changes how the course plays.
Does this site sell golf tours or golf packages for Scotland?
No. There is no golf-specific product in this roster, and no tour listed here includes a round of golf, a green fee or a caddie. The tours on this site are sightseeing day trips and multi-day touring packages. One of them, the 8-day Scottish Dream, passes through St Andrews as a sightseeing stop on day 6, which is a different thing from a golf tour.