Royal Aberdeen
A three-ball party doesn’t really have too many considerations with regards to green fees. Three golfers will experience some issues though
Muirfield only permits bookings from fourball parties. If you are three golfers who wish to play Muirfield you’ll be prevented from doing so unless Faraway Fairways can find you a locally qualified player who is prepared to make you up to the required number. The three of you would be expected to share the guests green fees between you
Some of the more popular courses reserve the right to allocate a single golfer 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.
The only sub-regions where we come under pressure are extended stays in Ayrshire, and to a lesser extent Aberdeenshire. Otherwise we have some truly great non-golf compliments. Golf got lucky really!
Gleneagles
The standard golf industry accommodation solution is a two person twin room. A group of three golfers breaks this arrangement and can mean that one of you will end under single occupancy. Clearly three people sharing the cost of two rooms is more expensive than four people sharing the burden. In some cases we have the flexibility to sleep three to a single room. This usually represents a significant saving. There are two ways of typically doing it. The first involves introducing a fold-out bed into a twin room. The other involves using a higher grade suite with more space to achieve the third bed. We might also be in a position to consider ‘family rooms’ as a third solution although we need to establish the quality of the third bed. Some are perfectly adequate adult single beds, whereas others are more appropriate for a child but get marketed as ‘three’
Seating capacity is rarely a problem with a golfing party, luggage however is. A golfer will normally generate one significant luggage item plus a golf bag so three golfers equals six luggage items. This is too much for an estate car. No ‘car’ exists that could handle this without resorting to the back-seat. Don’t allow anyone to convince you otherwise
The Mercedes Vito is the workhorse of the golf industry. With nine seats including driver, and a luggage capacity for nine items. We find that it also provides a high-level of ride comfort too. Although it represents something of an over-booking for three golfers, the costs shared equally amongst the group still aren’t prohibitive. It’s a much better solution than trying to force a square peg in a round hole though and cram a car. You’ll really regret doing this by the end of a trip to try and save about £100 each
Edinburgh Castle
Three 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
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
Three-ball parties can play the Old Course through a conventional ballot application. No problem. You will almost certainly be asked to accept a fourth player into your booking though who has presented on the tee using the walk-up rule. Although you aren’t under any compunction to do so, it’s considered incredibly poor protocol to refuse and very few parties do. Not only do you have to turn the applicant down to their face (they’ve probably been queuing hours) you can be sure that the St Andrews Links Trust Starter is going to take a dim view of you too
Some vendors might resist selling a guaranteed package to a three-ball party. It leaves an awkward fourth player to then re-sell. You might get around this by offering to compensate them to the full value of the fourth player in exchange for exclusivity, but it gets prohibitively expensive to do so
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
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Take a quick look at this easy to use menu to begin searching for ideas
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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
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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
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There are different ways of doing it. We go through and explain the options, plus their pro's and con's
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A breakdown of your chances of winning an Old Course ballot by month of the year, day of the week, and the best strategies to use
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Most itineraries adopt a self-drive solution. A three-ball will need to use an MPV for 6 luggage items and share the mileage burden, so its worth being aware of what's involved
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Prices are dynamic and affected by any end of things. We can give you a brief idea of what's involved though
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