Published 28 June 2026

There is no tee shot in golf quite like the first at the Old Course. You stand on the widest fairway in the game, the R&A clubhouse at your back, the town on your left and behind you, and you realise that golf has been played on this exact ground for the better part of six hundred years.

At Halcyon Golf Travel we build golf trips to Scotland for visitors from all over the world, and the Old Course is the request that comes up more than any other. I am Jack Sallis, and after getting hundreds of clients onto the Old Course over the years, I can tell you that playing it is part golf, part logistics and part luck. The good news is that you can stack the odds heavily in your favour once you understand how the system works.

This is the guide I wish every client had read before they got in touch. It walks through every realistic route onto the Old Course, what each one costs, the information you need to hand, the famous holes you will face, the busy weeks to avoid, and the small details nobody mentions until you are standing at the starter's hut. By the end you will know exactly how to plan a trip that gives you the best possible chance of teeing it up at the Home of Golf.

The opening tee shot at the Old Course, shared with the eighteenth, in front of the R&A clubhouse.

Can Anyone Play the Old Course at St Andrews?

Yes. Despite its fame, the Old Course is a public course, open to visiting golfers of any nationality. You do not need to be a member of any club and you do not need an invitation. The only firm playing requirement is a handicap of 36 or better for both men and women, and you must show a valid handicap certificate to the starter on the day. In other words, the hard part is not qualifying to play; it is securing the tee time, and that is what this guide is really about.

• Open to all: a public course with no membership or invitation required.
• Handicap limit: 36 for men and women, certificate shown to the starter.
• The real challenge: getting a tee time, not eligibility.

How Do You Get a Tee Time on the Old Course?

There are five routes onto the Old Course. The most certain is a guaranteed tee time booked in advance through a St Andrews Links Authorised Provider. You can also apply directly to the advance application, a lottery held the previous autumn; enter the free daily ballot drawn two days before play; join the singles daily draw if you are travelling alone; or simply turn up and put your name on the walk-up standby list at the starter's pavilion. Each route trades certainty against cost and flexibility.

• Guaranteed tee time through an Authorised Provider - the most certain route, sold as part of a package, at a premium.
• Advance application direct to St Andrews Links - free, by lottery, the autumn before.
• Daily ballot - free, drawn two days before play, for groups of two to four.
• Singles daily draw - for solo golfers, the day before play.
• Walk-up standby - turn up at the pavilion and hope for no-shows.

The single most important thing to understand is the trade-off between certainty and cost. A guaranteed tee time removes all the anxiety: you know the date, you can build the rest of the trip around it, and you will not go home disappointed. The free routes cost nothing to enter but offer no guarantee at all, and plenty of golfers arrive in St Andrews without a confirmed time and leave without having played, which is heartbreaking when you have travelled a long way for exactly that round.

As a rough guide, a guaranteed Old Course tee time booked through an Authorised Provider typically adds around £3,000 per person to a package compared with the same trip built around the ballot. Whether that is worth it comes down to one question: how would you feel if you travelled all that way and never got on? For many clients the certainty is worth every penny. For others, happy to spend a week in Fife playing a string of world-class links, the ballot route is the smarter spend. Our dedicated walkthrough of how to play the Old Course pairs neatly with this guide if you want the short version.

Guaranteed Tee Times and the Advance Application

If you want to know with absolute certainty that you will play the Old Course, there are two routes. The first is a guaranteed tee time, which St Andrews Links releases to a limited number of Authorised Providers each year. These are genuine, secured times rather than ballot entries, and they are the most certain route onto the course. They are sold only as part of a package, usually built around a minimum of five nights with accommodation and additional golf, and they start from upwards of £7,000 per person. What you are buying is total certainty. Demand vastly exceeds supply, the best dates for any season are usually gone a year or more ahead, and the lesson is simple: if a guaranteed time matters to you, plan early.

A guaranteed package is not the only way to know your tee time in advance, though. The second route, the Old Course advance application, is made directly to St Andrews Links and confirms your place the autumn before you travel: the window opens in late August and early September, and you find out in October whether you have been successful for the following season. Crucially, you can nominate up to three different preferred date ranges. The more flexible you are with those dates, the better your odds, so it pays to give the lottery as many ways to say yes as possible. You apply as a group of a minimum of two and a maximum of eight golfers, and if you are drawn you are allocated a tee time on the Old Course along with a round on one of the other Links courses (the New Course, the Jubilee Course, the Castle Course or the Eden), reflecting the two-course policy that applies in the high season. It is free to apply, the draw is random, and successful applicants are notified in October.

One more thing worth knowing: The Open Championship returns to St Andrews in 2027, which always sends demand soaring in the surrounding years. If your heart is set on a guaranteed Old Course round, the next couple of seasons will be more competitive than usual, and early planning matters more than ever.

• Guaranteed times: secured, date-specific, priced well above the green fee, booked a year or more out.
• Advance application: free lottery, opens late August, up to three date ranges, group of two to eight, results in October.
• Plan around 2027: The Open's return makes the next two seasons especially busy.

Some of our clients with me on the Swilcan Bridge, the most photographed spot in golf.

How Does the Old Course Ballot Work?

The Old Course ballot is a free daily draw that releases roughly half of the course's tee times to visiting golfers. You enter as a group of two, three or four players two days before you want to play, and a draw decides who gets on. Entries close at 2pm and the results are published the same afternoon, usually by around 4.30pm. Because the Old Course is closed on Sundays, no ballot is drawn on Fridays. It is sometimes called the Old Course lottery, and for many visitors it remains the most realistic and most affordable way onto the course.

The timing trips people up, so it is worth spelling out: you apply two days ahead of play. Enter on Monday for a Wednesday round, on Saturday for a Monday round, and so on. You can enter online at the St Andrews Links website, by phone, or in person at the Old Pavilion or one of the clubhouses. It costs nothing, and there is no limit on how many days you enter during a stay, which is the key to the whole thing.

For every player in your group you need their full name, their home golf club or association, and a current handicap. The handicap limit is 36 for both men and women, and if you are successful every player must show a valid handicap certificate to the starter on the day. Have those details written down before you enter, because you will be entering on most days of your trip and fumbling for handicap numbers each afternoon gets old quickly. For clients who book through us, we manage the ballot entries every single day so they never have to think about it.

• Who: groups of two to four (no single entries).
• When: by 2pm, two days before play; results by about 4.30pm. No ballot on Fridays.
• What you need: each player's name, home club and handicap (36 max).
• Cost: free, and you can enter every day of your stay.

How Can You Improve Your Chances in the Ballot?

The ballot is a lottery, but it is a lottery you can game with good planning. The golfers who win it are almost always the ones who gave themselves the most chances.

A well-planned trip turns the Old Course ballot from a long shot into a likely yes. We land groups of two to four players a tee time through the daily ballot around 75% of the time, and that comes down to clever planning, not luck.- Jack Sallis, Founder, Halcyon Golf Travel

• Stay long enough to enter several times. A single entry is a long shot; basing yourself in St Andrews for four or five nights means four or five draws, and your cumulative odds climb sharply.
• Be flexible on tee time. If you will happily play at first light or late afternoon, you give yourself far more slots to land in.
• Target Thursdays and Saturdays. These days tend to carry the most ballot times.
• Travel in the shoulder or low season. Spring and autumn are far less oversubscribed than peak summer.
• Build the trip around the ballot, not on top of it. Fill your backup days with Kingsbarns and the New, Jubilee and Castle courses so an unsuccessful draw still leaves you playing wonderful golf.

It is also worth knowing how daylight plays into this. If you travel in June or July, the sheer length of the Scottish summer day puts many more tee times on the sheet, early in the morning and late into the evening, so even with peak-season demand there is more to go around. Those long northern evenings also produce some of the most magical golf you will ever play.

I will never forget a round on the Old Course in June 2023. We teed off at around 5pm and walked up the last hole just before sunset under a sky streaked orange and purple. The rooftop balcony of the 18 Bar at Rusacks was packed and lively, punters cheering the good shots and laughing at the bad ones. It remains one of the most memorable and iconic moments I have ever had on a golf course.- Jack Sallis, Founder, Halcyon Golf Travel

The view down the Old Course from the rooftop bar at Rusacks - the 18 Bar balcony where the crowd cheered us up the last.

A practical point on those backup rounds: most courses in the area will happily reschedule a booking if you win the ballot, because they know the rhythm of it well. When you book with us, we handle all of that rearranging for you the moment a ballot entry comes good, so a successful draw never costs you another round; planning an entire trip around the ballot is exactly what we do, and we make it easy. Beware, though, that this is always subject to availability. The one exception I flag to every client is Carnoustie, which sells out well in advance; if it is a must-play, it is the only course I would not plan to enter the ballot on, because there may be no slot to move your Carnoustie round to.

Where you base yourself matters too, because being on the doorstep makes entering the ballot day after day effortless. Right beside the links you have the iconic Old Course Hotel overlooking the seventeenth, and Rusacks St Andrews right on the eighteenth. A little further out sit the grand Fairmont St Andrews on its clifftop estate, the boutique Seaton House by the first tee, and the elegant Kinnettles Hotel in town. For more on combining courses, accommodation and timing, our ultimate guide to St Andrews golf trips pulls the whole picture together.

Can You Play the Old Course as a Single Golfer?

Yes, through the Singles Daily Draw. You cannot enter the main ballot alone, but solo players have their own system, and it is a genuinely good one because single spots are needed to fill out two and three-balls every single day. To enter, you go in person to either the Old Pavilion beside the first tee or the St Andrews Links Clubhouse the day before you wish to play, generally between 9am and 4pm. You complete the entry form on one of the tablet devices provided and have a photograph taken on the tablet's camera so staff can identify you when a place comes up.

The part that surprises people is how civilised the modern system is. The old overnight queue at the starter's hut is gone. After the draw, you are notified by text message and email, usually around 7pm the evening before, telling you whether you have a place and when you will play. There is no need to camp out and no need to show up at the first tee at short notice and wait around; you simply turn up for your allocated time. For a solo golfer it is one of the best-kept secrets at the Home of Golf.

The Singles Daily Draw instructions at the Old Course pavilion, where solo golfers enter on the tablets.

Travelling alone is not a disadvantage at St Andrews. The singles draw quietly gets more solo golfers onto the Old Course than most people realise, and you find out the night before.- Jack Sallis, Founder, Halcyon Golf Travel

Can You Just Turn Up? The Walk-Up Option

There is one more route that rarely makes the official guides, and it is worth knowing. You can simply turn up at the starter's pavilion by the first tee and add your name to the walk-up standby list. The pavilion has food and drink available, so it is no hardship to settle in for a while. Groups cancel, players fail to show, and gaps open in the tee sheet throughout the day, and patient walk-ups do get out, particularly first thing in the morning and late in the afternoon. It is a gamble with no guarantee, but if you happen to be in town with a free morning and nothing to lose, it is well worth a try.

• Where: the starter's pavilion at the first tee, food and drink on hand.
• Why it works: no-shows and cancellations free up slots through the day.
• Best odds: early morning and late afternoon.

How Much Does It Cost to Play the Old Course in 2026?

For the 2026 high season, from 21 April to 18 October, the Old Course green fee is £355 per person. Outside those dates the fee drops in the shoulder and low seasons, which is one of the quiet advantages of an autumn or early-spring trip. On top of the green fee you should budget for a caddie at £80 plus a customary gratuity of around £40, paid in cash at the end of the round. Realistically, a single round comfortably runs to the region of £475 once the caddie and tip are included.

A useful local tip: there is a cash machine at the first tee, so if you find yourself short of notes to pay your caddie you are covered. If you are taking the guaranteed route, a package including the Old Course, accommodation and additional golf over a minimum of around five nights starts from upwards of £7,000 per person, which is roughly £3,000 more than the equivalent trip built around the ballot. None of that is meant to put you off; it is simply the reality of playing the most sought-after course on earth, and most golfers find it money very well spent.

• Green fee (2026 high season): £355 per person, lower in shoulder and low season.
• Caddie: £80 plus a gratuity of around £40, cash, paid after the round.
• Realistic round cost: about £475 all in, before travel and accommodation.
• Handy to know: a cash machine sits right by the first tee.

The Course Itself: Scorecard and Hole Names

The Old Course plays as a par 72, measuring a touch over 6,700 yards from the daily medal tees and well beyond 7,300 from the championship markers. What the scorecard cannot convey is how unlike anything else it is. The course runs out and back along a narrow spit of land, sharing seven enormous double greens between fourteen of the holes, so that only the first, ninth, seventeenth and eighteenth have a green to themselves. The hole numbers on each shared green famously add up to eighteen.

Every hole carries a name, and those names are woven through the history of the game. Here is the full card.

The features hidden inside those names are the soul of the place. The Swilcan Burn snakes across the front of the first green. Hell Bunker yawns in the middle of the fourteenth, deep enough to swallow a round whole. The eighteenth is played to the Valley of Sin in front of the green, with the town and clubhouse framing one of the great walks in sport. Add the Principal's Nose, the Beardies, the Coffins and the loop of holes from the seventh to the eleventh, and you have a course that reveals new layers every time you play it.

Golf has been played on the links at St Andrews for around six hundred years, since the early fifteenth century, which makes the Old Course the oldest in the world. It had no single architect; it evolved over centuries, with Daw Anderson and the legendary Allan Robertson shaping it in the 1800s and Old Tom Morris, appointed Keeper of the Green in the 1860s, giving it the form we know today - widening the fairways, building the huge double greens and the steep revetted bunkers, and designing the first and eighteenth holes. It only became the "Old" Course when the New Course opened alongside it in 1895.

The Old Course has 112 bunkers, almost all of them named and many hidden from view until it is too late. They range from tiny, vertical-walled pot bunkers that can need a sideways escape to the gaping Hell Bunker on the fourteenth and the small but fatal Road Hole bunker on the seventeenth. Steering you clear of them is a caddie's single greatest value, because you simply cannot see most of them from the tee.

The seventeenth, the Road Hole, is widely regarded as the hardest par 4 in golf. It asks you to drive blind over the corner of the Old Course Hotel to the shallowest of greens, guarded at the front by the cavernous Road Hole bunker and at the back by a path and a stone wall that have wrecked countless cards. The par-5 fourteenth, Long, is usually the official stroke index one, but for sheer fear factor nothing on the course matches standing on the seventeenth tee.

Caddies, Clubs, Dress Code and Getting Ready

A caddie on the Old Course is not strictly compulsory, but I would urge almost every first-time visitor to take one. The course is famously hard to read: blind tee shots, hidden bunkers, vast double greens with borrows you will never spot from the fairway, and a local knowledge of lines that turns a bewildering layout into a playable one. A good caddie is worth several shots and a great deal of enjoyment, and at £80 plus a gratuity of around £40 to £50 it is among the best value in the game. Caddies are paid in cash, so remember that cash machine by the first tee, and book your caddie in advance once your tee time is confirmed.

The Old Course is a walking course. Motorised buggies are not permitted other than for golfers who are registered disabled and hold the appropriate medical certificate, and even pull trolleys are only allowed after midday. There is no driving range at the Old Course itself, so your warm-up happens at the St Andrews Links Golf Academy and Practice Centre near the Eden Clubhouse, a short distance from the first tee. It is an excellent modern facility with more than sixty bays, around twenty of them under cover for the inevitable Scottish weather, plus dedicated short-game and bunker areas. Give yourself time to loosen up there; the first at the Old Course is not a shot you want to play cold.

The Old Course expects standard golf attire on the course: a collared shirt with golf trousers or tailored shorts, and golf shoes with soft spikes. There is no need for a jacket and tie, and St Andrews is a refreshingly relaxed town off the course, where smart-casual is the norm and denim is perfectly acceptable around the hotels and pubs. Pack for the weather above all else; a waterproof and a warm layer will serve you far better than anything in the rulebook.

Yes. Rental sets are available and should be reserved in advance, which saves the hassle and risk of flying with your own clubs. For multi-day hire, Auchterlonies is the long-standing choice, a minute's walk from the eighteenth green, stocking current Callaway, Titleist and TaylorMade sets. Caddies, trolleys and any permitted buggies should all be booked ahead too, as supply is limited.

Allow around four and a half hours for a round in season, a little less out of it; in the depths of winter the locals get round in three. Plan to arrive at least 45 minutes before your tee time to check in, collect any hire clubs, warm up and soak in the atmosphere of the Links Clubhouse. If you have a spare moment, the Himalayas putting green beside the first tee, run by the St Andrews Ladies' Putting Club, is a wonderful and very cheap way to fill it.

When Is the Best Time of Year to Play the Old Course?

The Old Course season runs from April to October. June and July bring the longest daylight - in late June you can play until almost 11pm - which puts far more tee times on the sheet, so there is more chance of getting on despite the crowds. The shoulder months of April, May and October are quieter and often give the best ballot odds, while November to March offers the cheapest golf and the quietest links. Avoid the middle two weeks of September for the R&A Autumn Meeting and early October for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

• Most daylight and most tee times: June and July.
• Best ballot odds: April, May and October.
• Cheapest and quietest: November to March.
• Avoid: mid-September and early October.

The Old Course at 11pm in June - the long northern daylight that puts extra tee times on the sheet.

When Can't You Play? Busy Dates and Closures

A few dates are simply off the table, and knowing them in advance saves a great deal of disappointment. The Old Course is closed to golf every Sunday of the year, when it becomes a public park for the town to walk and picnic on. It means you cannot count on a Sunday round under any circumstances.

The biggest annual closure is the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, the DP World Tour pro-am played across the Old Course, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns. In 2026 it runs from 1 to 4 October, with the final round held solely on the Old Course, and the course is effectively unavailable for visitor play during the tournament and the build-up around it. The preceding R&A Autumn Meeting takes out a chunk of late September too, so the back end of that month is best avoided altogether. Spring brings the occasional Old Course Reversed days, when the course is played clockwise, and there are club medals and championships dotted through the calendar. Periodic course maintenance can also restrict access, as it did over the winter of 2025 and 2026 during a major irrigation project. Always check the official St Andrews Links busy-dates calendar before fixing your travel.

• Every Sunday: closed, open as a public park.
• Late September to early October: R&A Autumn Meeting and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship (1 to 4 October 2026).
• Spring: occasional Old Course Reversed days.
• Always: check the official busy-dates calendar before booking flights.

What About Winter Golf at St Andrews?

The low season, roughly November through March, is the connoisseur's secret. Green fees fall, the town is quiet, and your chances in the ballot rise sharply against the summer crush. St Andrews Links offers winter packages that bundle guaranteed rounds across the other Links courses, often with a food and drink credit and use of the Golf Academy thrown in, which makes for a wonderful value-led trip even setting the Old Course aside.

A couple of honest caveats. Winter conditions mean fairway mats may be in play to protect the turf, and daylight is short, so you are planning around tighter playing windows. Old Course access in winter can also be restricted in years when maintenance work is underway, so it is not always part of the winter package. None of this should deter you. A crisp, still winter's day on the Fife coast, with the course almost to yourself, is one of the great experiences in golf. If you would like to weigh up the seasons properly, our guide on how to plan the perfect golf trip to Scotland goes into the timing in more detail.

Where Do You Go for a Drink Afterwards?

Half the joy of a round at St Andrews is the pint that follows it, and the town has more genuinely great pubs per square mile than anywhere else in golf.

• The Jigger Inn. The most famous nineteenth hole in the game, just off the seventeenth green in the grounds of the Old Course Hotel. Recently refurbished, it pours its own Jigger Ale and the beer garden looks straight onto the Road Hole.
• The Dunvegan. A short walk from the eighteenth, its Golfers' Corner is plastered floor to ceiling with photographs of the great and the good, and it is a favourite of the local caddies.
• The Road Hole Bar. Up in the Old Course Hotel, with a whisky list drawn from every working distillery in Scotland and a view down the seventeenth and eighteenth.
• The Keys Bar. A locals' favourite on Market Street with hundreds of malt whiskies, recently named among the best bars in Scotland.
• One Under and the Central. One Under sits just below the eighteenth at Rusacks for a livelier mood, while the Central on Market Street is the classic town pub for an unfussy pint.

If you enjoy this side of a golf trip as much as I do, you will find plenty more in our roundup of the best golf pubs in Scotland. A good caddie will happily point you to their own favourite, too.

Putting It All Together

Playing the Old Course is one of the genuine pilgrimages in sport, and with a little knowledge it is far more achievable than its reputation suggests. Decide early how much certainty you want, keep your dates flexible, plan around the ballot rather than against it, build a trip rich enough that no single draw can make or break it, and choose a base that lets you enter on as many days as possible. Do that, and your odds of standing on that first tee climb enormously. Whether you want a guaranteed time pinned to a specific date or the thrill of chasing the ballot across a week in Fife, we will build the trip around you, handle the entries every day, and make sure the rest of the week is as memorable as the Old Course itself. Every trip we plan begins with a free, no-obligation 30-minute discovery call, so we can understand exactly what you are hoping for.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a handicap to play the Old Course?

Yes. The handicap limit on the Old Course is 36 for both men and women, and every player must present a valid handicap certificate from their home club or golf association to the starter on the day of play. Bring a printed or digital copy with you, because without it you can be turned away even after winning the ballot. The other Links courses at St Andrews do not require a handicap.

How much does a round on the Old Course cost in 2026?

The 2026 high-season green fee, from 21 April to 18 October, is £355 per person, with lower rates in the shoulder and low seasons. A caddie costs £80 plus a customary gratuity of around £40, paid in cash, and there is a cash machine at the first tee if you need it. Realistically, budget close to £475 for a round once the caddie and tip are included, before any other golf, travel or accommodation.

Can you play the Old Course as a single golfer?

Yes, through the Singles Daily Draw. You cannot enter the main ballot alone, but solo players can enter the singles draw in person at the Old Pavilion or the Links Clubhouse the day before play, generally between 9am and 4pm, using the tablet devices provided. You are notified by text and email around 7pm the evening before, so there is no need to queue overnight or wait at the first tee, making it a reliable route for those travelling on their own.

Is the Old Course open on Sundays?

No. The Old Course is closed to golf every Sunday and opens instead as a public park for the town to enjoy. This is a long-standing tradition, so no ballot is drawn for Sunday play and you should never build an itinerary that depends on a Sunday round. The other St Andrews Links courses do remain open on Sundays.

How far in advance should I apply for an Old Course tee time?

For a guaranteed time through an Authorised Provider, plan a year or more ahead; these are sold only as part of a package, usually from around five nights and upwards of £7,000 per person, and the best dates go early. The free Old Course advance application is the other way to know in advance: it opens in late August and early September, lets you nominate up to three preferred date ranges, and notifies successful applicants in October for the following season. With The Open returning to St Andrews in 2027, the next few seasons will be especially competitive, so the earlier you commit, the better.

Are buggies allowed on the Old Course?

No. The Old Course is a walking course and motorised buggies are not available except for golfers who are registered disabled and hold the appropriate medical certificate. Even pull trolleys are only permitted after midday. Plan to walk the full round, and make sure your group is comfortable doing so before you travel.

What are my chances of winning the ballot?

It varies enormously by season. In spring and autumn the ballot is far less oversubscribed and success rates are high, while peak summer is genuinely competitive and a single entry can be a long shot. The way to improve your odds is to enter on several days during your stay, stay flexible on tee time, and favour Thursdays and Saturdays, which tend to carry the most ballot slots.

Do I have to take a caddie on the Old Course?

A caddie is not strictly compulsory, but it is strongly recommended, especially for a first visit. The Old Course is exceptionally hard to read on your own, with blind shots, hidden bunkers and enormous double greens, and a caddie's local knowledge is worth several shots and a great deal of enjoyment. At £80 plus a gratuity, booked in advance once your tee time is confirmed, it is some of the best value in the game.

Jack Sallis

Founder, Halcyon Golf Travel

Jack Sallis is the founder of Halcyon Golf Travel, a UK-based specialist designing bespoke golf trips across Scotland, Ireland and England. A +4 handicap golfer, he represented England at junior level and continues to compete regularly for Nottinghamshire and the Old Wellingtonians, having reached final qualifying for the Open Championship in both 2022 and 2024.

He is a member at Hollinwell and Rye Golf Club, two of England's most respected traditional clubs, and a member of the British Golf Collectors Society.

With deep, first-hand knowledge of courses and hospitality throughout the UK and Ireland, Jack combines elite playing credentials with on-the-ground insight to create exceptional, detail-driven golf travel experiences built around access, authenticity and a genuine understanding of the game.