Search Courses Location Edinburgh, Fife and Angus (East Coast) Glasgow, Ayrshire and Argyll (West Coast) Islands (North and West) Middle of Scotland North East (Aberdeen and Moray Firth) North of Scotland South East Scotland South West Scotland Course Name If you only want to see information for certain types of course, make your selection in the various option groups. If you want to see, for example, both links and inland course just leave the group blank. Course Type links inland any Difficulty hard easier any Holes 9 18 any Special Features championship Open qualifier easy walking Towns   Town Name Hotels   Hotel Name Cheap Moderate Expensive

Courses
We are not trying to tell you that every course in Scotland is a masterpiece of design to be followed by a gastronomic tour de force in the clubhouse. You are our customer: not the golf club so we try to provide an honest assessment of courses and hotels and to classify them in a useful way.

The major distinction we have applied to courses is whether they are links courses or inland. A links course is the original type of Scottish golf course at the sea's edge. It's architecture is largely determined by nature, not too hilly, fairways groomed by salt spray and wind and greens, with links grass, slow in rain but lightning fast as they dry out. The great championship courses such as St Andrews and Carnoustie are links courses but almost every seaside town has at least one such course. Inland courses include everything from hilltops abounding with moor and heather to lush parks with artificial water hazards. Although Scotland will be forever associated with links, don't ignore the scenic charms and the golfing challenges of our other courses.

Many courses describe themselves as Championship Courses, or championship status, often because they are particularly long. We have tried to be more rigorous: unless a recognised championship has been played over the course it is not included (and a recognised competition doesn't include the Women's Rural Institute annual fourball).

Easy and difficult to play are somewhat subjective and you may be less than pleased with the easy classification after losing your third ball of the round. We have based this partly on standard scratch score and partly on gathered opinion.

The same applied to easy and difficult walking (which also depends on which route you take round a course and how many hazards you have to negotiate). "Easy walking" does try to identify courses suited to the physically infirm.

Hotels
Like most other places, the standard of service, accommodation and cuisine in Scottish hotels and guest houses ranges from superb to appalling. We have categorised accommodation by price (cheap, moderate, expensive rather than a more pretentious economy, standard and deluxe) which often bears no relation to service. The various tourist board and motoring organisation awards are of little use: so what if there is a shower with every room if you can't get even a sandwich when you arrive hungry and tired? Remarks other than simple descriptions are what we have found out ourselves or what people on holidays have told us: we value your comments and experiences.