Your Golf Travel - Extraordinary Golf Experiences - Flipbook - Page 29
Homing In On The
Home Of Golf
SCOTLAND’S FINEST GOLF EXPERIENCES
With The Open Championship returning
to the Old Course at St Andrews in 2020,
there has never been a better time to start
planning a visit to the Home of Golf and
some of Scotland’s other top golf destinations
with Your Golf Travel.
Words by Nick Bayly
Although Old Tom Morris would probably
spin in his grave at the thought of St
Andrews being called a ‘golf resort’, the
ancient town on Fife’s east coast is one in all
but name, with golf tourism being its main
source of income since the game was first
played here 400 years ago.
The fabled Old Course is clearly the sun
around which all the other courses in the
town draw their heat and getting a tee time
on the ‘Auld Lady’ seems to be as hard as
ever. There’s rarely a let up in demand for a
chance to walk in the footsteps of the great
champions that have graced this course
at 29 Open Championships since 1873,
and will do so again next July, when the
tournament returns for the 30th time.
The Old Course remains the ultimate bucket
list course and is a must-play for any golfer
with a pulse. Half of all of the starting times
are selected through a daily ballot, so there’s
a fair chance of getting on if you haven’t prebooked, but thankfully Your Golf Travel has
an exclusive range of packages that offer
guaranteed tee times, taking out all of the
luck of the draw, and allowing you to plan
your trip with absolute certainty. And what a
treat you will have in store!.
Offering the most nerve-wracking opening
tee shot in golf, despite possessing one of
the widest fairways in the world, the Old
Course sets up iconic shot after shot. From
your approach over the burn to the first
green, to the drive over the corner of the Old
Course Hotel on the 17th tee, and that putt
up the Valley of Sin at the closing hole, it’s a
beguiling journey through golfing history that
will have you wanting to do it all over again
as soon as you walk off the 18th.
St Andrews is long on quality and quantity,
with the Links Trust offering no fewer than
seven other superb layouts on which to test
your mettle, with the New Course being
the pick of those in the immediate vicinity.
Less quirky than the Old, it shares many
of its qualities, including several double
greens, but the holes are more defined.
If you’re looking for more thrills and spills,
then I’d recommend a game at the Castle
Course, a 6,759-yard cliff-top layout which
enjoys stunning views over St Andrews from
around the bay. Talking of bays, Fairmont
St Andrews Golf Resort & Spa, located in
St Andrews Bay, is also a popular luxury
stopover, with its two championship courses,
Torrance and Kittocks, providing 36 holes of
cliff-top golf with a links feel, while the fivestar hotel offers 209 guest rooms, a spa, and
no fewer than six dining options.
For golfers looking to stay more centrally in
St Andrews, the MacDonald Rusacks Hotel,
which sits half way up the right-hand side
of the 18th fairway, is perhaps the more
authentically Scottish venue. Although,
the Old Course Hotel, which is situated on
the dogleg of the Road Hole 17th, with the
fabled Jigger Inn within its grounds, is the
popular and obvious choice, with its coursefacing suites providing a suitably luxurious
vantage point from which to soak up the
golfing atmosphere.
Moving away from St Andrews, no five-star
visit to Scotland should miss out on the
chance to visit Gleneagles, the self-styled
highland playground of the rich and famous
down the years. Golfers have been queuing
up to play the resort’s PGA Centenary
Course ever since it hosted the Ryder Cup
in 2014, and interest in the Jack Nicklausdesigned layout will ramp up once again
following the staging of the Solheim Cup in
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