This is perhaps the top piece of advice. It’s amazing how many golfer’s overlook it though.

We will get a deeper, richer, and more rewarding experience from Scotland by seeking out things beyond her fairways. Many of Scotland’s top courses just happen to be in close proximity to genuine apex visitor attractions. That’s a lucky coincidence. We can add some serious value by combining club and country without really going out of our way to do so. Think of it like this.

All operators can book the same golf courses. For the most part, we also use similar portfolios of accommodations too. Not everyone can bring the country to life however. This is very often where the value lies.

All tour operators advise this, but honestly, it isn’t the industry trying it on. It’s a genuinely sensible piece of advice.

Scotland’s top golf courses don’t do ‘late deals’. Put simply, these don’t exist. The only thing we’ll likely to achieve leaving things late is sub-optimal tee-times (if we’re lucky), sold-out or more expensive accommodations would be the more likely outcome. The only area we might get a ‘deal’ is on vehicle hire, but even then we’re just as likely to find everything’s been released. It’s not a risk we should run

The booking curve moved because of covid and hasn’t fully restored. What happened was that people who held reservations for 2020 and 2021 cancelled them in the spring with 80% rebooking at the point of cancellation. By the time the late summer and autumn entrants emerged they were running into sold-outs because of these rearranged bookings made in the spring. Faced with a smaller pool of options, people who enquired in the autumn started to book for the following year and began a whole new cycle, thus moving the curve by about six months

Muirfield is the first Scottish course to sell out (February) for play the following year. Royal County Down and Portrush do something similar in Ireland

Faraway Fairways normally advocate playing as many different courses as we can, but don’t overlook the terrific, (often about a third cheaper) green fees for playing a replay round exist at places like Kingsbarns, Dumbarnie, Castle Stuart or Prestwick

Scotland has a tradition of golfin’ in the gloamin’. It’s often the most peaceful time of day to play. Some courses offer reduced twilight rates. Don’t be afraid to throw one in for the experience. We can also find that on some courses they’re also less expensive (Royal Dornoch, Brora or Gleneagles) but more golf clubs tend to protect the evening times for their members rather than sell them to the visitors

No one is suggesting ‘setting fire to money‘ and we should always look to achieve value, but there is a danger of over-doing it to the point where we begin to damage the quality of the product if we keep squeezing. This can come back to bite us months later. Any satisfaction is quickly forgotten in the field as we come to regret what we’ve done

In truth, we’ve done this privately ourselves, where we’ve spent months wallowing in the warm glow of satisfaction in the knowledge that we thought we’d done something smart to save ourselves a bit of money. Yes we’ve enjoyed telling everyone how little we were paying for our trip to Peru and watching their response. It’s only a year later when we’re in Peru that we find ourselves cursing some complex, slow, or uncomfortable solution and wishing we’d paid a little bit more to solve it

This is really easy to overlook if we’re in a 9 to 5 mindset.

At high northern latitudes, particularly in June and July, the sunsets at about 22.00 or rises at about 04.30 if we’re so inclined. If we’re in the highlands and have landscapes which aren’t opening time dependent in our programme, or travel burdens to navigate on a point-to-point tour, we can seriously add quantity or time. Let’s game it out.

If we say there are four hours of useable daylight in the evening, and we’re on a weeks vacation, that’s 4 hrs x 7 days = 28 hours. We can engineer about two extra days into our plans for free

Admittedly the Old Course ballot is something of a pseudo science in its own right, but different months of the year, and different days of the week do have different levels of performance. We know, and respect this and build it into a strategy.

Don’t automatically assume however that the clearest week is always our best chance of winning. Success is the product of the ratio between supply & demand. If everyone draws the same conclusion, this ratio rises as more golfers all try to land on the same runway. A prima face favourable week can quickly become over-subscribed and turned into an unfavourable week

It very often pays to be a little bit smarter as the whole process is more nuanced. It’s what we call a ‘Goldilocks window’ (not too hot, not too cold, but just right)

Things can go wrong with any overseas travel. Have you booked with someone who is based on the same time zone as the point of delivery?

A lot of operators can sell you a package. Some are based in the country of delivery and in a position to assist you in-situ. Others aren’t.

Those which aren’t will usually rely on a local agent to represent them. This can even be another tour operator who is based in the country of delivery. Whereas you might think this gives you peace of mind (it should do in truth) you might end up paying twice. The agent will take a percentage to deliver or be available to support the selling retailers package.

Now we would say this of course. Faraway Fairways are an agent/ operator, but you can decide as to its validity

By all means prioritise the St Andrews Old Course and make it our primary target (a majority of visiting golfers do) but don’t allow it to become an all consuming obsession.

As a general rule, provided we’re determined to play it, are prepared to go the extra mile if needed, and plan appropriately, we will succeed in doing so more times than not (but will probably need to embrace the singles ballot to tip the balance firmly in our favour).

Keep a sense of perspective after that though and don’t let it cloud out all the other opportunities that we could easily be passing up by allowing your vacation to otherwise turn into a ‘one course gig’.