St Andrews Links: Notes from the Home of Golf

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and I still find myself short on both when I try to explain how special St Andrews is. I have visited three times now, and there are plans to return.

Each time I go I notice the same thing: how easy it is to feel welcome here, and how little of that is left to chance. It is the kind of golf experience that stays with you.

How to get a tee time at the Old Course

Getting on the Old Course takes a bit of planning, though it is more achievable than the mystique suggests. There are three main ways in.

The advance ballot. Applications for the following season’s advance ballot open in late August or early September. You apply as a group of two to four with your preferred dates, and you will find out months ahead whether you got a spot. This is the route if you want certainty and you can plan that far in advance.

The daily ballot. Two days before play, you can enter the daily ballot for a tee time. Groups of two to four enter by 2 pm, and results come out later that afternoon. This is how a lot of visitors actually get on, and the route I would recommend if your trip is already booked and you did not make the advance ballot.

The single golfer draw. If you are travelling solo or willing to split from your group, you can enter the daily singles draw. The day before you want to play, head to the Old Pavilion next to the first tee or the St Andrews Links Clubhouse between 9 am and 5 pm, and enter your details on the tablet there. The draw runs at 5 pm and you will get a text and email if you have been paired into a group with an open spot. The previous overnight queue at the starter’s hut was retired in 2024, which probably saved a lot of golfers from a very cold morning.

A few things worth knowing. The Old Course is closed to golf on Sundays, so plan around that. You will need a handicap of 36 or below (for both men and women) to play, and there are six other courses on the St Andrews Links. Even if the Old Course does not work out, you have got the New, the Jubilee, the Castle, and more to choose from. None of them are consolation prizes. The New Course opened in 1895, which puts its newness in proper perspective.

If you are going for the experience as much as the round, enter the ballot and let the rest of the trip be the trip. Worst case, you walk the course on Sunday with a coffee and a dog or two (they don’t have to be yours).

2022: Just a teaser

The goal of our first trip was to sightsee, shop, and soak in the town. St Andrews itself is stunning, full of independent golf shops (including one entirely for women), beautiful old buildings, and a lot of dogs. If you ever have the chance to visit, add a stop at Auchterlonies Ladies Locker Room to your itinerary.

A well-known fact about the Old Course is that it is a public space. You can pop onto the Swilcan Bridge for a quick photo (as long as you are not holding up the group on the tee), and you actually have to cross the 18th and 1st holes to get to the beach.

Every Sunday, the course closes for golf and opens for everyone else. Locals and visitors walk the fairways, picnic on the greens, and bring their dogs along.

This is what golf should be.

From my first step into the town, I felt welcome. The ladies’ selections were present and well stocked across most of the shops we went into, the people were warm, and everyone was happily and completely obsessed with golf.

I did not have a tee time on this trip, though I got bit by the golf bug hard. I was planning my next visit before the plane hit the runway home.

2024: I golfed this time

When we booked the trip, we applied for the advance ballot and were genuinely disappointed when we did not get a spot. A few weeks later, a cancellation came through, and we got our tee time after all.

The first fairway at the Old Course is one of the widest in golf, which is a small mercy when you are standing on the tee with your hands shaking. We shook off the early morning nerves and were just thrilled to be in play.

It would not be a Scottish golf trip without some weather, and we got the full package. Sun, rain, hail, thunder, lightning, and wind, all in one round. Biblical, frankly. It added to the experience in a way that felt very on-brand for the course.

One thing worth knowing: if the weather sends you off the course, your tee time is done. You do not get to come back on. With that in mind, we took “cover” on 14 (in a small bush) when the lightning got close, waited it out, and resumed a few minutes later. The near-death experience added to the round, and to our scores.

The bunkers were no joke. The weather was a challenge. The experience was unforgettable.

2025: A quick day trip

In November 2025, I had the fortunate chance to tag onto a third trip to Scotland with my in-laws, who were kind enough to drive us all the way from Glasgow to St Andrews (a two-hour drive). The focus this time was mainly Christmas shopping, and if you are into golf gifting, late autumn is a fantastic time of year to grab top-tier pro shop pieces at major discounts. We are talking up to 50% off. The town in November is quieter than the summer months, with shorter days, the off-season calm settling in, and the shops feeling roomier without the crowds. It made for a very different kind of St Andrews day.

A quick note on the Himalayas

Just beside the Old Course, tucked between the 18th green and the West Sands, sits one of my favourite pieces of golf history: the Himalayas. It is the putting green of The Ladies’ Putting Club of St Andrews, founded in 1867 at a time when women were not permitted to play the Old Course itself. The club gave women in St Andrews a place of their own to play, compete, and belong to the game on their own terms. It is still running today, and the green is open to the public for a small fee.

I did not get to play it this trip. November is not exactly putting weather, and the shopping bags were already full. Even so, every time I walk past the Himalayas, I think about the women who founded it, what they were quietly insisting on, and how much of the welcome I feel in St Andrews today traces back to corners of the town like this one. The Old Course gets the headlines. The Himalayas, in its own way, is part of why the home of golf actually feels like home.

The End?

Three trips in, and the thing I keep coming back to is not the golf itself. It is how welcome the place makes you feel. The ballots that give everyone a way in, including solo golfers. The course that opens to the whole town every Sunday. The shops that stock for women like they were always expected. A green founded in 1867 so that women who were shut out had somewhere of their own.

Welcome like that does not happen by accident. Someone built it.

There is a fourth visit somewhere on the horizon, and probably a fifth after that. The home of golf has a way of pulling you back, and the Logbook will be here when it does.