Old Course Hotel, Golf Resort & Spa

No other golf course hosted more Opens than the Old course at St Andrews. It has staged 29 Open Championships, more than any other course on the rotation, and is considered to be "the Home of Golf".

Rarely is the Old course ranked outside the top ten because it’s a very special links, designed by Mother Nature. Surely there is little left to write about St Andrews; the spiritual home of golf, the world’s most famous links course, the mother of golf and so on. It is probable that golf was played here way back in the 12th century; what is certain is that the Old course is one of the oldest golf courses in the world.

In the late 1800s, the Old Course was getting too popular, largely due to the extra visitors flocking to St Andrews on the trains. The R&A decided to pay for the New course to be built in return for allocated tee times on the Old. These rights are still enclosed in an Act of Parliament passed in 1894, the precursor to the current Act of 1974, which specifies how the public St Andrews links courses are managed. The New course was designed by Old Tom Morris and Benjamin Hall Blyth, an Edinburgh engineer, and opened for play in 1895. This makes it one of the oldest “new” courses in the world!

“The Home of Golf” at St Andrews is the only venue in Britain that can lay claim to having seven courses in its portfolio and the Jubilee, the third oldest course at St Andrews, is perhaps the most underrated of them all. In March 1897, John Angus was presented with the challenge of designing a course suitable for beginners and having it ready for play the same year. The 22nd June 1897 was a public holiday to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria and on this day a rudimentary 12-hole course was ready for play. In commemoration, it was called the Jubilee. At the turn of the century, the course was extended to 18 holes, and in 1946, Willie Auchterlonie made further improvements to the layout. In 1988, Donald Steel gave the Jubilee a complete overhaul and upgraded the links to championship standard. The course now measures over 6,800 yards.

Six years after St Andrews Links Trust purchased land at Kinkell Braes outside the town – just along from the Torrrance and Devlin (now called Kittocks) golf courses – the much-anticipated new Castle course welcomed its first paying customers at the end of June 2008. Laid out on a cliff top with more than a mile of waterfront overlooking the town, the Castle was constructed by David McLay Kidd and his DMK design company. Lead shaper, Mick McShane, deserves much credit for turning featureless farmland (described as a “hillside of rotten rock”) into anything remotely resembling a golf course, in much the same way as he did at nearby Kingsbarns.

According to golf historian Bobby Burnet, golf at Kingsbarns dates back to 1793. A nine-hole golf course once played over part of the current layout. The “nine-holer” was commandeered by the military at the outbreak of the Second World War because they felt that the beach at Kingsbarns was an invasion risk. The golf course disappeared until American architect Kyle Phillips came along at the close of the 20th century.

Owned and operated by the Old Course Hotel which is located next to the famous 17th hole on the Old Course, The Duke’s lies three and a half miles southeast of the hotel on the high ground at Mount Melville, overlooking the Auld Grey Toon. The Melville Estate was first established in 1698 for General George Melville of Strathkinnes and both the mansion house and grounds were developed during the 18th century by General Robert Melville. In 1900, the property was sold to Dr James Younger of the Younger Brewing family.