The Old Course Ballot: Building a First Scotland Golf Trip Around It

A first golf trip to Scotland gets built backward from one fact: you cannot book the Old Course months out the way you'd book a stay-and-play package at a resort. St Andrews Links Trust allocates most Old Course tee times through a daily ballot, and getting on depends on entering the lottery correctly, not on planning far enough ahead.

Everything else in the trip, where you stay, how you fill the days you don't draw a time, how you fly there, should get planned around that uncertainty.

The Old Course ballot: what to actually expect

The ballot lives at standrews.com/old-course-ballot, the Links Trust's own site, and it's live as of July 2026. A direct fetch of that page this session returned only the site's navigation shell, not the full rules text, so nothing below is quoted from the page itself. It's presented instead as reported by golf-travel operators who cover St Andrews closely, cross-checked against each other, with a pointer to confirm the specifics live before you enter.

Per Golfbreaks' write-up of the process, checked July 2026: the ballot closes at 2pm, two days before your intended play date, and results post by 4:30pm the same day. Entries need two to four players, not one, each with a name, home club or association, and a handicap. St Andrews caps the handicap limit at 36 for both men and women, and a valid handicap certificate is required on the day.

Before you enter, confirm those exact numbers on the live ballot page yourself. Deadlines and cutoffs at working golf clubs shift without an announcement, and this is the one claim in this piece worth a second look the week you actually plan to enter.

If you don't get picked

Missing the ballot doesn't end the trip. St Andrews Links Trust runs eight courses total, not one: the Old Course, New Course, Jubilee, Eden, Strathtyrum, Castle Course, Balgove, and Craigtoun, added to the portfolio in 2026 per Golf Digest's reporting.

The New Course sits next to the Old Course and was designed by Old Tom Morris. The Castle Course, opened in 2008, plays along the cliffs south of town with sea views the Old Course doesn't have. Either is a real round, not a consolation prize.

If you're traveling solo, the ballot won't take you anyway, since it requires two to four players. The Links Trust replaced its old overnight singles queue with the Singles Daily Draw on March 12, 2024, per National Club Golfer's reporting.

Register in person at the Old Pavilion or the St Andrews Links Clubhouse between 9am and 5pm the day before you want to play. A random draw at 5pm slots successful entrants into existing groups with open spots, and successful golfers get notified by text and email. The old overnight queue used to run past 12 hours in bad weather; the digital draw replaced it entirely.

Where to base yourself

Scotland's golf geography splits into three regions worth knowing before you pick a base, per VisitScotland's own golf page, checked July 2026.

Fife is the "Home of Golf" and where St Andrews sits, with a dense cluster of traditional links courses overlooking the coast in addition to the Old Course itself. If the ballot is the centerpiece of the trip, Fife is the obvious base.

East Lothian, which VisitScotland calls "Scotland's Golf Coast," sits close to Edinburgh and packs more championship links per square mile than anywhere else in the country, including North Berwick, Gullane, and The Renaissance Club. It's the right add-on for a trip that starts or ends in Edinburgh rather than St Andrews.

Ayrshire & Arran, on the west coast, carries some of Scotland's most storied Open Championship venues and dramatic seaside courses with views toward Arran and Ailsa Craig. It's farther from St Andrews and Edinburgh, so treat it as a separate leg or a different trip rather than a day trip from Fife.

Getting to Edinburgh

Edinburgh Airport (EDI) is the gateway for a St Andrews trip, about an hour's drive from town. Per Edinburgh Airport's own destinations page, checked July 2026, direct US service currently runs from New York (American, Delta, JetBlue, and United), Boston (Delta and JetBlue), Philadelphia (American), Atlanta (Delta), Chicago (United), and Orlando (Virgin Atlantic). Some of these routes run seasonally rather than year-round, so check the specific dates for your travel window before booking.

That's a 7 to 9 hour nonstop from most of those cities, long enough that the flight itself becomes part of the trip planning, not an afterthought. If you carry American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, or United MileagePlus miles, all three airlines fly this route nonstop, which makes award pricing worth checking before you pay cash for a transatlantic ticket. See /points for how F&M approaches covering a flight like this with miles instead of dollars.

A long transatlantic flight is also one of the few stretches of a golf trip where you're not golfing, driving, or eating, which is exactly the gap our course-themed puzzle books were built for. Check /books if you want something to do at 35,000 feet besides watch the flight map.

Building the itinerary around uncertainty

The honest version of a first Scotland golf trip: enter the Old Course ballot two days before each date you're in St Andrews, plan a real round on New, Castle, or Jubilee for the days you don't draw, and don't build a schedule so tight that missing the ballot once wrecks it. Pair that with an East Lothian day if you're routing through Edinburgh, or treat Ayrshire as its own trip.

For more on planning golf-specific trips and how to pay for them with points instead of cash, see /golf and /points. And if this is the first Fairways and Miles piece you've read, the newsletter is where we send the next one.