Fore! Scotland Golf
[flo_image_text image_url=”http://cywokphotoblog.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/00002.jpeg” img_position=”right” img_width=”50″ ] Our golf trip to Scotland starts May 24 and ends May 31 with me sending Chris home at that time, hopefully not too full of whiskey. We fly into Glasgow and depart from Edinburgh. I will be staying an additional 7 days in Scotland to travel to other regions but details of that trip will be the subject of another post. We will be playing 7 courses over our 8 day golf stint which represents 4 out of the 9 golf regions.[/flo_image_text]
All our arrangements were made by Bonnie Wee Golf. For a single price, they arranged for a car rental, accommodations and tee times at all the golf courses including putting our names into the daily draw at St Andrews. We opted for the self drive option rather than hiring a driver, which was an additional cost. I should be able to trust Chris to safely drive me to all our locations. They were also very much cheaper than some of the other tour operators that Chris originally was looking at i.e. half the cost. We will only be staying in 2 hotels, starting with the Marine Hotel in the Ayrshire region then the Lorimer House in the Fife area. Both have good ratings in tripadvisor if you believe these rating sites are accurate.
We also decided to rent clubs from an outfit called GolfGearClubs. Of course Chris went for the most expensive option and the retired guy went for the value set.
The courses we will be visiting in order of play are:
- Western Gailes
- Turnberry Ailsa (Open championship 2009)
- Royal Troon (Open championship 2016)
- PGA Centenary Gleneagles (Ryder Cup 2014 venue)
- Kingsbarn
- Carnoustie
- St Andrews Old Course (if we win a ballot)
To play St Andrews requires that you win a daily ballot for a tee time. We will have 3 opportunities to win and according to our tour guide, we should have high chance of getting a tee time. If we fail to win a ballot our tour operator will arrange for a game at another course.
Most courses do not require you to present any handicap information but St Andrews requires proof of handicap and will check every time. The maximum handicap allowed is 24. So now I have to incur another $40 cost by joining Golf Canada to get a registered handicap.
Here are the map locations for the first 3 days.
Here are the map locations for the last 4 days.