Luxury Golf Tours To Scotland - The Source & Soul of Golf

Scotland remains, as ever, the source and the soul of the game of golf. A visit is equal parts history lesson and golf adventure. The history is powerful, and pervasive, and provided in what amounts to a continuous museum quality experience. The joy of course is that this museum is entirely and uniquely interactive. When your name is called to the first tee at the Old Course - where the likes of Morris, Braid, Jones, Palmer, Nicklaus and Woods have teed it too - your knees will know it. It's more of the same when you survey The Postage Stamp, and when you turn into the wind at Hogan's Alley. The Scots offer an inordinate number of the world's most cherished golf courses and everybody is invited to play.

Even better, Scottish golf is beautifully convenient. The clubs are clustered for the most part, often allowing you to select a single hotel from which to operate. On the west, Ayrshire Coast, you'll find Turnberry with her Ailsa and Kintyre Courses, Royal Troon, Western Gailes, Glasgow Gailes, Dundonald, and a throw back among the throw backs – Prestwick. Then, for those with steely determination and the deepest sense of appreciation for the experience of links golf, there is The Machrie and Machrihanish. Both are magnificent and elusive. A visit to their remote locales, the southern tip of The Mull of Kintyre and the Isle of Islay, promises to distinguish the career of any traveling golfer.

On the east coast, St. Andrews is flush with seven courses of its own as part of the Links Trust, plus neighboring Kingsbarns, Crail, and St. Andrews Bay with The Devlin and Torrance courses. Slightly north, a collection featuring Carnoustie also includes Panmure, Montrose and Monifieth. An hour west is renowned Gleneagles, one of the world’s most respected hotels and home to some of James Braid’s and Jack Nicklaus’ finest work.

The Scottish Highlands are highlighted by world #15, Royal Dornoch, whose plateau greens are a feature that Donald Ross took from his home course and used on many of his classic designs. Nairn, Nairn Dunbar, Brora, Moray and Tain are longstanding favorites of northern visitors who are also certain to enjoy Royal Aberdeen and world #78, Cruden Bay on the way up or back.

Less than two hours south of St. Andrews, is East Lothian, where you will find yet another assortment of clubs representing the essence of links golf. Gullane’s three courses, North Berwick, Dunbar, and Cragielaw are situated in succession along the coast east of Edinburgh each with histories reaching back to the roots of the game.

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Golf & Travel Editorial

The Kintyre Express: Linking the great links courses of Ireland, Ayrshire and Kintyre by: David DeSmith
This story involves golf, a boat, and some of the best links golf courses in the world. It's a long but compelling story that will take a little while to tell. But if you'll bear with me for a few blog posts, in the end you'll come away from it with the best links golf itinerary anyone has ever imagined. The story goes like this... Once... Read more

Golfing Scotland, by Rail: End of the Line by: Hal Phillips

While the 2005 Senior British Open first exposed to a large television audience the brilliant Balgownie Course at Royal Aberdeen, broadcast coverage of the event featured only the inward nine. Television often features only the final nine holes of competition on Saturday and Sunday. But here’s the thing: The outward nine at Aberdeen plays amid towering dunes that could only be termed “Ballybunionesque”. It is ... Read more

St. Andrews Old Course, Scotland by: Chris Santella
One story regarding the birth of golf goes something like this:  a group of shepherds watching over their flocks along the eastern coast of Scotland in the late 1400s or early 1500s became bored.  Armed with the tools of their trade – namely crooks – and acting on the natural male instinct to hit things – in this case, pebbles (or, as some have suggested, ... Read more

My Heart's in The Highlands by: James A. Frank
The wild weather at St. Andrews during the Open Championship didn’t surprise me as I’d just returned from a week in Scotland where I faced my own share of wind, rain, sun, clouds, and nearly every other condition Mother Nature can throw at traveling golfers. And like the Open at the Old Course, it was great stuff. I did spend some time in St. Andrews before the ... Read more

On the Supernatural Connection Between Scotch and Golf by: Jeff Wallach

Surely it’s more than mere happenstance that the game of golf and the drinkable artwork that is Scotch whisky were both created in the gorgeously green, wind-swept, salty-aired duneslands of Scotland. Although the origins of golf are slightly shrouded in mist, many believe the game was invented as early as the 14th century by fishermen returning from beach to village across rolling links.  If one fisherman ... Read more