The exclusive west Edinburgh course of Royal Burgess is the oldest golf club in the world with a continuous verifiable history (1735).

The course is a parkland layout and makes for an ideal opening assignment, especially given it’s proximity to the airport. The 4th and the 11th holes are normally singled out as the most challenging, the latter even having its very own ‘Swilcan’ bridge.

The elegant clubhouse is a joy to the eye. ‘The Burgess’ is soaked in tradition and heritage and operates as something of a ‘mini museum’.

Royal Burgess enjoys the advantage of being smack in the heart of Scotland’s capital, and so allows you to spend the evening like many traveller before you has.

World top-25 ranked & Open Championship venue

The iconic Stevenson lighthouse sitting on its craggy headland in amongst the ruins of Turnberry castle, and with views of Ailsa Craig and the Isle of Arran out to sea, plus a tendency to put on spectacular sunsets, Turnberry is the most aesthetic of all the Open venues. In modern golfing legend Turnberry is forever etched in the pages of history as the location for the ‘duel in the sun’ from 1977 when Tom Watson narrowly prevailed over Jack Nicklaus with the rest nowhere. Myths are made in moments, but legends last a lifetime.

In 2016 the course finished it’s stunning redevelopment. The new holes 9-11, look set to become the signature stretch. Not so much Amen Corner, as perhaps a Rocky Horror! The fifth is the hardest on the course and has been toughened up further. The fourteenth, an infinity hole out to sea might become the most awe inspiring.

Is Turnberry the best course in Scotland? We don’t know, it’s a hotly contested accolade, but it’s certainly in any conversation

Sometimes World top-100 ranked, & Open Championship venue

Troon is a traditional links and has hosted the Open a total of ten times. Make your score going out. The inward nine against the omni-present wind is always a trial, made harder by hideously deep rough interspersed with thick gorse and broom.

The par 3, eighth, described by Willie Park as “a pitching surface skimmed down to the size of a Postage Stamp” is the signature hole. The name stuck, and today it’s one the most recognisable short holes in the global game

It’s the par 4, eleventh, ‘the Railway Hole’, that’s the most feared though. In 1997 Tiger Woods carded an eight here. Jack Nicklaus was even more chewed up. He returned a ten in 1962. You have to wonder if there is a hole anywhere in world golf where Jack and Tiger have each signed for quadruples?

More recently Troon staged the memorable 2016 Championship. Henrik Stenson edged Phil Mickelson in one of the most stunning displays of head-to-head play in Major Championship history. They pulled a remarkable 11 shots clear, both shooting record equalling 63’s en-route.

World top-10 ranked & Open Championship venue

Frequently ranked inside the world’s top 10, Muirfield is the ‘blue-blooded’ aristocrat of Scottish golf and always immaculately presented. It doesn’t really have any weak holes. So impressed was Jack, he went back to Ohio and built Muirfield Village in homage to the original.

Muirfield instigated a then revolutionary design of two loops of nine. This was to prevent players dialling into the wind of the traditional out and back nine and adjusting.  This design ensures that the wind is constantly changing direction so as to test all aspects of your game and reading of a ball in flight. All three paradigms of golf design penal, heroic and strategic.

The prestigious roll call of Muirfield Open championship winners is perhaps its best testimonial. Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Faldo, Els & most recently of course, Mickelson. It offers golfers choices and then requires you to execute. It is a golfers, golf course.

Muirfield is notoriously exclusive however, access is limited. Booking early isn’t just advised, it’s pretty well essential.

World top-50 ranked

The links of North Berwick are a traditional out and back nine. Undulating fairways, blind shots, tricky burns and even stone walls make their presence felt in the landscape. The course really is a throw back to the experiences of the game’s pioneers who had to interpret the landscape and weave the hazards nature handed them into their own personal tapestries. North Berwick has an endearing old-fashioned feel.

North Berwick also possesses the original ‘Redan’ hole, (15). Found the world over, ‘Redans’ are the most copied hole in golf.

The Redan completes a trio of holes from 13 which is rarely surpassed in Scottish golf, perhaps only Turnberry’s 9 to 11, and Carnoustie’s 16-18  has better claims for being the best consecutive 3 in a row.

North Berwick is one of those rare courses you never hear a bad word said about, and we’re always struck by the fact that it seems to be the most knowledgeable and the best judges who enthuse most about it.

It would be wrong to think that it’s a curiosity relic though. It’s a beguiling world top-50 ranked course on merit.

Recent Ryder Cup Venue

The majestic trio of courses at Gleneagles are a masterpiece of golf course design, which has caught the imagination of  both professional and amateur alike. Lee Trevino remarked whilst standing on the first, “that if this is heaven I sure hope they have some tee times available”.

The regal King’s Course is certainly one of the most beautiful and exhilarating places to play golf in the world, with the springy moorland turf underfoot, the sweeping views from the tees all around, the rock-faced mountains to the north, the green hills to the south, and the peaks of the Trossachs and Ben Vorlich on the western horizon.

Threading through high ridges on the north and west sides of the estate, the Queen’s course is the most aesthetic of the Gleneagles trinity. It presents you with lovely woodland settings, lochans and ditches as water hazards, as well as many moorland characteristics.

Having hosted the 2014 Ryder and 2019 Solheim Cups, the Centenary Course is the longest and probably the most recognisable today. It plays out towards the dark glen, sweeping up the Ochil Hills to the summit of the pass below Ben Shee, which joins it to Glendevon. Course architect, Jack Nicklaus, described it as “The finest parcel of land in the world I have ever been given to work with”

There are records of golf being played at Kingsbarns from 1793, but the modern course opened in 2000, and is set on three-tiered levels, sloping towards the coast. Nearly every hole has stunning views of the North Sea.

Kingsbarns  quickly racked up rave reviews and earned a world ranking of about #50, a position which it’s held more or less since.

The par 5, twelfth hole that plays along the arching shoreline to an exposed green, and the par 3, fifteenth, which involves playing a tee-shot across the waves, are often considered to the courses signature assignments. It was the fourth and fifth that caught Tom Doak’s eye when he described as Kingsbarns

“as piece of construction work, Kingsbarns is one of the best projects I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it for myself”

Perhaps of greatest significance is the number of times it beats more illustrious neighbours in surveys amongst visiting Americans since its always immaculately presented.

Kingsbarns completes the trio of East Coast giants that host the European Tour’s Dunhill links challenge each year alongside Carnoustie and the Old Course.

World top-10 ranked & Open Championship venue

The precise identity of the St Andrews Course we play will depend on the outcome of the ‘open’ ballots and the singles ballots (no one is going to sell a ‘guaranteed’ package for such a short duration)

With all the usual disclaimers of a lottery being random, and there being no such thing as a certainty etc plus the variable factor of availability for the specific week chosen, we should be able to contest at least three open ballots (Thurs, Fri & Sat) plus the Saturday afternoon of arrival for a maximum total of three and half.

We’ll only be able to contest two ‘singles’ ballot (Thurs for Fri and Fri for Sat) although we might decline the first of these.

This means a maximum total of five and half ballot attempts. Our prospects of success should be slightly better than a ‘coin toss’ if we use the singles ballot, perhaps 66/33, although we do have two prime days (Saturday) on-side, plus the next best day of the week (Thursday)

Our duration exposure to St Andrews is probably too short for sourcing a ‘guaranteed’ package

If we fail, then we’ll look to use the St Andrews New Course as compensation under the present-pay-and-play-on-the-day protocol that exists

World top-50 ranked & Open Championship venue

Dubbed ‘Car-Nasty’, Carnoustie is considered by many to be the most difficult links in the Open Championship rotation

In recent years it has seen some dramatic finishes, none more so than in 1999 when Jean van de Velde took an eight at the 72^nd hole to throw away the claret jug. Iconic images of him paddling in the notorious ‘Barry Burn’ have entered golfing legend. The final four holes are the hardest finish on the rotation. After the carnage of 1999 (6 over won) Sport Illustrated described it as

“a nasty antique that was brought down from the attic after 24 years …the rough was deeper; and the R&A made the fairways as narrow as an eel’s appendix scar”.

Whereas the eighteenth is the hole that has often generated the most drama. The par 3 sixteenth has the highest average scoring par 3 on the Open Championship rotation as indeed the closing four are the hardest.  The Par 5, sixth ‘Hogan’s Alley’, is another famous hole with a punitive out of bounds fence running down it’s left

1999 Carnoustie reduced Sergio Garcia to tears after successive scores of 89 and 83