St Andrews 1st.
A single player doesn’t really have too many considerations with regards to green fees, but will experience some issues. Muirfield only permits bookings from fourball parties. You’ll be prevented from playing.
Single players do benefit from flexibility though and will find that they’re able to slot onto a tee-sheet much later than conventionally sized groups. There’s often a gap somewhere. This is particularly true of somewhere like Kingsbarns, Carnoustie, Dornoch and even Troon
A few courses will permit a single golfer to play solo, but most reserve the right to allocate other golfers pairing to your booking to make up a fourball
Scotland, Ireland, and North-West England are seriously rich for quality non-golf visitor attractions in close proximity to their top courses. You can bring non-golfers along safe in the knowledge that they won’t be missing out. As a single golfer though we’ll need to be strategic about how you share the vehicle. This will impact where the non-golfer is able to visit. In truth though, there’s a good synergy between golf and visitor attraction. We won’t be forcing one to bend around something that isn’t really there. Golf doesn’t dictate to non-golf. They co-exist quite well
Gleneagles
Single golfers get penalised. Hotels either price at per room, per night, or per person, per night. In the case of the latter, a single person reservation will nearly always draw a ‘supplement’ on the occupancy. This is better than the per room rate, but it’s never pro-rata. It tends to be about 85% of the double occupancy rate. We could mitigate it a little bit by using single rooms or B&B’s, as they don’t tend to be as punitive as hotels, but we can also damage the experience too if we over-do the trading down to compensate. You might take the view that you’d rather enjoy extra space that single occupancy affords.
Faraway Fairways wouldn’t discourage anyone from using a budget business hotel under single occupancy. The UK has a particularly good provider who have a very comfortable bed as standard. This can often restore the price per person parity on a double occupancy
Seating capacity is rarely a problem with a golfing party, luggage however is. A single golfer will normally generate one significant luggage item plus a golf bag. This is under the threshold for a medium saloon car. It means we don’t need to use a more expensive estate car so can make a saving on a smaller hire category vehicle
The smallest car that would work would be a ‘hatchback’. We advise that you don’t use one of these though. They can be under-powered and aren’t really ideal for the type of driving you’ll likely be doing. The next category up, ‘medium saloon’, is fine. This is what we’d encourage you to use. You need some ride comfort and the ability to sustain an effortless motorway speed
Castle Stuart 3rd
Edinburgh Castle
Single golfers won’t experience any problems trying to introduce non-golf visitor attractions into a programme. Faraway Fairways can’t think of anywhere in Scotland that is affected. The only possible angle might be some specialist distillery tours who sometimes limit numbers to no more than ten, but this is really a question of booking in good time, and in any event, a single person is handed an advantage here
A majority of golfers choose to bring their own clubs. If you’d prefer to hire, then it normally works out more expensive once everything has been done. There would be a choice between using a golf hire club agency or the pro-shop
Since the early 1990’s single golfers had to use something called the ‘walk up rule’. In March 2024 however, this was functionally abolished with the introduction of the ‘singles ballot’.
The walk up rule was in truth a bit discriminatory in terms of who was best equipped to succeed with it, and the post covid boom meant that golfers were having to launch ever longer sieges which began to resemble a rough sleeping endurance event.
The new system requires that single golfers present to the old Pavilion between 09.00 and 17.00 to enter for a random draw 24 hrs before the day of play
Most visiting golfers focus on St Andrews, but this is only the start of the story. The world top-100 list tends to be where people look next
Discover
Take a quick look at this easy to use menu to begin searching for ideas
Discover
Anyone can book a golf vacation. That's not too hard to do. Adding value is where the key lies though. We take a look at a few less obvious tips
Discover
When? Is always an important early question a party needs to answer. Discover the pro's and con's of different seasons and different months
Discover
There are different ways of doing it, but single golfers are forced onto the walk-up rule. We go through and explain the options, plus their pro's and con's
discover
Most itineraries adopt a self-drive solution. A single player will need to shoulder this burden, so its worth being aware of what's involved
discover
The range of places you might choose to stay in is surprisingly large, albeit single travellers are disproportionately penalised by 'room supplements' (normally)
Discover
Prices are dynamic and affected by any end of things. We can give you a brief idea of what's involved though
discover
