But I only want the Old Course tee-time, and don’t want anything else. Can I not just buy the tee-time?

We hear this lament a lot. In 99% of cases, the answer is No

Old Course tee-times aren’t sold this way. They can’t be. At the absolute minimum, you’ll have a second mandatory course sold alongside the Old Course (usually the Jubilee) but more often than not, they’ll be sold as part of a conditional ‘take it or leave it’, levered package.

The only way you might be able to operate outside of these restrictions are

• If you can come to a compensation agreement with the seller for their revenue foregone.
• If the tee-time has failed to sell and they’re looking to get it gone (very unlikely)
• If its a resold tee-time at late notice

The quick answer to this is “Authorised Providers”

An Authorised Provider is typically an approved Golf Tour Operator (GTO) or an approved St Andrews accommodation provider. Some other third parties might be able to qualify, but the GTO and Accommodation providers are the two main source

Authorised Providers can be identified by the logo below … but beware

We say beware not because there is any underhand practice, but because Authorised Providers can only sell times that they’ve been issued with. This is critical.

Think of it like a non-transferable airline ticket. Authorised Providers get issued with their allocation (dates and time) at the start of July for the following season. These are then locked. They can only sell that tee-time, for that date

You can’t ring one up say “I want to play on July 5th” and expect them to sell you July 5th unless they’ve specifically been issued with July 5th as a date to sell. If they’ve been issued with July 6th, then they can only sell July 6th

Identifying an Authorised Provider is potentially of little consequence therefore. What you need to do is identify one who has times in the date window you want. You can expend a lot of time and energy going up blind alleys and chasing shadows if you aren’t careful

Guaranteed tee-times are nearly always sold as levered packages. What the Authorised Provider chooses to include in the package is up to them. At the absolute minimum though another round (usually played 24 hrs before the Old Course) on one of the other St Andrews Links Trust courses is mandatory. After that though, the sorts of things you’ll encounter usually include

• Minimum stay duration (usually 4 or 5 nights)
• Hotel will often be non-negotiable (you’ll possibly find the accommodation is the source of the tee-time, even if sold through a GTO)
• Minimum spend on food and beverage in that hotel (usually about £150 pp)
• Possible conditional room choice (some will lever a suite rather than the cheapest room they have)
• Any other rounds of golf that are part of the package (GTO’s tend to lever these more than hotels, and especially now that the Old Course Hotel has disposed of the Dukes Course)
• Occasionally mandatory transport provision (it’s quite rare to see this made conditional, but it can happen)
• Any other aspect that the seller might have a commercial interest in supporting (hotel services and facilities etc)

Faraway Fairways have reverse engineered the price of packages before and we estimate that the Old Course tee-time is generally charged about seven to eight times its standard retail value

The brief answer is ballots

• Private Advanced Tee Times (PATT)
• ‘The’ (open) Ballot
• The Singles Ballot

The open ballot and singles ballot are straight tee-time only with a green fee charged at the prevailing rate.

The PATT time will lever a mandatory second course, and does tend to cost a bit more than the two green fees combined suggest it should do, but it isn’t a lot more and anyone who wins would likely still make that trade (well they wouldn’t have entered it in the first place if they weren’t!) but unlike the commercially sold guaranteed tee-times you can’t really accuse the Links Trust of exploiting the PATT system

The St Andrews Links Trust (SALT) opens a window for two weeks every year at the end of August and start of September for Private Advanced Tee Times (PATT) on the Old Course. You’re usually allowed to nominate a maximum of three, two week playing windows, or specific dates if needing to work of shorter timeframe for midweek times only.

• You can cover a maximum of six weeks (30 days).
• You can apply as a two-ball up to a twelve
• Single players can apply for dates up until June 30th
• Anyone appearing in multiple entries will get every entry disqualified

The big drawback to the PATT system (and Faraway Fairways are growing increasingly reticent about using it) is that the results tend to come out mid/late October.

Our chances of winning it are low (about 1 in 20 peak season), but by mid October other courses we might be wanting to play will have sold-out such as Muirfield, Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, and we’ll scratching around at the likes of Royal Troon, Carnoustie and North Berwick. If we want to play these courses as well, then we can’t really afford to wait until October to ‘get them’. In other words, we need to book these courses first and then build a PATT attempt around them, rather than trying to do book post result (which we’ve likely lost anyway)

The exception to this, might be the traditional St Andrews golf week, or one which is based in Fife

This can be entered as a two-ball, three-ball or fourball. Single golfers can’t enter the ‘open’ ballot

The green fee paid is the advertised retail price, making it the least expensive option.

Probabilities of success vary by month of the year and day of the week.

If we’re shrewd about our targeting and prepared to put enough time aside to run the numbers game, we can usually make this work. Bear in mind that there are at least three courses in the St Andrews area we’d be happy to play whilst waiting for our name to come out the draw anyway (Carnoustie, Kingsbarns, & Dumbarnie). In addition to this, we can also contest ballots from an Edinburgh or Gleneagles base too without inconveniencing ourselves as well

It might be worth noting that there is also something that operates alongside the open ballot called the ‘Local ballot’. The ratios in the local ballot are more favourable than the open ballot, but to enter this you’ll need the support of a registered local player who’ll play alongside you. It’s much harder to ‘pull off’, but occasionally we encounter someone, who knows someone etc

For overseas visitors, the singles ballot seems to enjoy the best strike-rates. Again the green fee is the base retail price

The singles ballot differs from the open ballot however in so much as only the named individual can enter and play. The award of a tee-time is made in favour of the single player only, who will then join whichever group has the space in it to make up a fourball with them

The named individual also has to make their own applications to the St Andrews Links Trust (SALT) at the Old Pavilion between 09.00 and 17.00 for play the following day. Unlike the open ballot, third parties can’t process singles ballots applications on your behalf

If you’re cash-rich, and time-poor, and don’t have a problem paying 7 or 8 times more for something than it really costs, then the guaranteed package isn’t without its attraction.

Remember also that the pricing is designed to prey on people who are obsessed with the Old Course and gnaw away at those insecurities. Old Courseitus can become a little bit of an illness, same way that mountaineers suffer from ‘summit fever’ leading them into mistakes born out of obsession

Faraway Fairways tend to the view that a well managed ballot strategy is the better value, but that does mean making use of the singles ballot to reinforce the open ballot. On balance it looks more like a question of how we’ll play, rather than one of if we’ll play.

We have to concede however, that whatever way we try and cut it, there is always that element of risk to this. Even a well designed ballot strategy can fail (and that’s what the whole ‘guaranteed sector’ feeds off).

For that reason the question of whether a guaranteed tee-time is worth it? has to be answered with “it depends…”