Do I put something about video in here?
The Coast to Coast Golf Vacation, St Andrews and Ayrshire, combines the east and west coasts, and follows a daily back-to-base model based on St Andrews and Troon. The local mileage associated with this is low. Indeed, a majority of the mileage is made up from the transfer between the regions and the ‘airport runs’.
In total we cover up to four Open Championship venues (five if we count Prestwick) plus a few other highly regarded modern links
The non-golf offer is a bit slow to ‘get going’ but once we reach Tuesday it starts to go through the gears and improve
The Coast to Coast Golf Vacation is laid out as a nine night duration that observes two individual daily back-to-base models, one based on Troon and the other centred around St Andrews. It otherwise only involves a linking drive between the two and stays at:
At about 450 miles, the Coast to Coast Golf Vacation Golf Vacation in Scotland & Ireland’ is a medium mileage, low intensity transport burden, largely defined by a single journey between Troon and St Andrews via Gleneagles which accounts for about 30% of the mileage.
In total, this should demand about 11 hrs 30 mins of road time, which is an average of slightly under 1 hr 15 mins a day (that’s manageable)
We wouldn’t normally advise the use of a hired driver for the Coast to Coast Golf Vacation Golf, but can see that its feasible, and you have a strong objection against self-driving, then Coast to Coast is one of the more workable trips for using an alternative.
We might consider using a combination of Edinburgh and North Berwick as our mid-point break instead of Gleneagles? This is a perfectly legitimate alternative and would generate a similar price, albeit it would be 50 miles further to complete this detour
The Coast to Coast Golf Vacation can support Luxury, Premier and Affordable options
As ever, the scale of non-golf activity depends on whether we’re adding extra value for golfers, or building a stand alone proposal for non-golfers to run alongside a golf programme. The Coast to Coast Golf Vacation exhibits a fairly strong correlation between golf and non-golf, with many genuine points of interest co-existing, although we should acknowledge that Gleneagles and St Andrews has a notably better offer than Ayrshire
The only two that any non-driving, non-golfers would need to consider bringing in a driving guide would be Stirling and any trip into Perthshire, although we could see that it would be easier all round if Glamis & Scone or The East Neuk with Falkland Palace were also considered under these terms
The following courses operate the following handicap thresholds for gentlemen and ladies respectively
Prestwick appear to have downgraded their previous ‘ask’ of 24 & 28, to “preferred”
Unlike some courses who needn’t be rigid in enforcing their handicap thresholds, the St Andrews Links Trust will do. Failure to provide evidence will result in a refusal to allow us to play
The Old Course diary is available on-line to consult for availability and is dynamic in so much as it changes every season, although there are some known block outs that occur every year, notably the first week of May, the first week of June, and a run from early/ mid September to early/ mid October
There is no play on the Old Course on Sunday
Troon only permits visitor play on Mon, Tues, & Thurs
Prestwick don’t permit visitor play on Sat or Sun morning.
Carnoustie whilst usually being open 7 days of the week, visitors will have to play afternoon tee-times at the weekend
Turnberry will only allow hotel guests to play in the morning (unless a visitor is prepared to pay a frankly outrageous green fee to do so). We can play in the afternoon however
With all the usual disclaimers of a lottery being random, and there being no such thing as a certainty etc plus the variable factor of availability for the specific week chosen, our prospects of winning a ballot on this programme would otherwise be considered as good (if we sought to use every opportunity to do so). We might actually describe them as ‘strong’ since there is a bit of a shuffling the deck we could perform that allows us to contest the first Saturday and rearrange Turnberry for Tuesday, with Gleneagles moving to the Saturday if we won with our very first possible attempt
We should be able to contest five open ballots (Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri & Sat) and at least three ‘singles’ ballot (Thurs, Fri for Sat). This means we could contest a total of eight (possibly nine) ballots.
Green fees need paying in advance and are always non-refundable against a certain timeline
Green fees need paying in advance and are always non-refundable against a certain timeline
A St Andrews Old Course ballot is drawn 48 hrs before play, and we can safely assume that this is outside any refund window! Any win in the ballot therefore will send us into a clash with which ever course we had booked that day, and we’ll a loss of the green fee unless we can get the tee-time rearranged. For this reason we don’t necessarily want to fill every day of the week up with a paid green fee and golf course. That would be designing a forfeit (we are after all setting up to win a ballot and play the Old Course)
Luckily the St Andrews New Course can’t be prebooked, and every other tee-time after 09.00 is offered present-pay-and-play-on-the-day. This is a great way of putting a placeholder into the itinerary without taking on the liability of a prepaid green fee
We try to schedule the New Course in any St Andrews swing to max out this position. If we win a ballot on the day we were going to try and play the New Course, we simply play the Old Course instead. If we win a ballot on another day, then we look to reschedule the affected course onto the day we had the New Course inked in and avoid a forfeit that way. We’ll usually try and put the New Course last in an itinerary then to give ourselves the maximum length of runway onto which we might land the rearranged round
Perversely perhaps, we’re actually hoping not to play the New Course. The reason we wouldn’t play it, is because we’ve won a ballot and are playing the Old Course instead