Scottish golf in the spring covers a stretch like no other season. Commercially, it begins in the winter season, runs through a brief ‘shoulder season’ and finishes in the summer. The spring might be the direst season of the year, but is quite capable of throwing wild and varied conditions at us, as well as opportunity.

Rather than use generic countrywide data, Faraway Fairways have built our own. We’ve weighted golfing destinations to reflect the typical composition of a trip, St Andrews (50%), Troon (25%) Edinburgh (15%) and Inverness (10%). The spring is the driest season and April the driest month. The temperatures rise throughout the season as we move towards summer

Average wind speed (St Andrews)

• March = 14.3 mph
• April = 11.8 mph
• May = 11.2 mph

At these northern latitudes we get extended daylight in the summer and reduced daylight in the winter. The latter part of the spring (second half of May) moves into the sort of territory where we can begin to play 36 hole days if we choose or start to exploit the daylight to achieve a lot more.

If we use the extended daylight judiciously we can begin to manufacture extra days for free by capitalising on the 2 or 3 hrs each evening

Our historic experience is that golfers can more or less pick and choose the number of rounds they wish to play in March. A ballot operates but it needn’t be unheard of for gaps to exist on the tee-sheet.

Things start to get busier in the second week of April, but the pre-covid days when we could achieve something like a 50% strike rate in April are seemingly over. We haven’t seen anything close to this level since golf reopened after covid, and have altered our advice now to reflect that April performs only marginally better than May (it used to be significantly better)

In mid April the Old Course moves to its shoulder season rates, typically about 33% off the peak season. The shoulder season lasts until the start of May

The first week of May sees a traditional block-out and is best avoided, but after that the summer season gets into full swing and things start to get competitive

March is often described as “in like a lion, and out like a lamb”. It can certainly throw up some incredibly varied weather, and we normally advise that we treat it as a de-facto winter month. In truth, most courses are still on their winter season rates in March, (so it makes sense to treat it as winter).

Winter usually means a green fee approximately half the price. It wouldn’t be completely unheard of for winter rules and mats to still be in operation on some though.

Kingsbarns and Royal Troon won’t be open for visitor play in March, but we can usually get first-class compensation at Muirfield which doesn’t get hammered to the same degree that their summer tee-times do. We’d expect to play Muirfield in March on about five months lead time

‘British Summer Time’ begins in the first week of April and adds an extra hour’s daylight to a day. The sun sets at close to 20.00 now. Kingsbarns opens on April 1st but will usually have significant corporate ‘take out’ to navigate for the first couple of weeks. Royal Troon begins to accept visitors about three weeks later

Shoulder seasons tend to at the start of April and last for two weeks, albeit some will run out for the duration of the month (Carnoustie, Dumbarnie and Kingsbarns). During this period green fees will typically be in the region of 33% less expensive than the peak summer rate.

April is the driest month of the year, and this extends to the Highlands too. People can make the mistake of looking at a map and the northerly latitude and thinking it’ll be unplayable. Not true. The Highlands of Scotland is surprisingly dry in April, although there can still be a bite on the wind.

For all intents and purposes May more or less functions as a summer month with seventeen hours of daylight by the end of it.

Turnberry, and Royal Aberdeen have the longest shoulder seasons but by the middle of the month they’ve moved onto their full summer rates. We start to encounter our first club fixtures in May, particularly at Carnoustie and St Andrews

May is the first month where you could perhaps begin to start thinking in terms of taking ferries out to the western isles with a sense that we’ll been unlucky rather than irresponsible should we encounter a weather disruption.