A golf weekend in Fife & St Andrews

There is no better base for a golf weekend than St Andrews. The Old Course finishes in the middle of the town, Kingsbarns is fifteen minutes down the coast, and the ancient links of the East Neuk — Crail, Elie, Leven, Lundin — are all inside half an hour. Two days here is a pilgrimage every golfer should make once, and the good news is you can do it on a weekend with almost no driving.

The Old Course is common land, owned by the town and free to walk on Sundays (when it closes to golf and the locals stroll the fairways). Getting a tee time takes planning: book an advance reservation months out, enter the daily ballot by 2pm two days before, or join the single-golfer queue at dawn and take your chances. Take a caddie — the Old hides its lines, its shared double greens and the depths of Hell Bunker from the first-timer, and the Road Hole 17th will eat you alive without one. Because it is shut on Sundays, build the weekend around a Saturday round.

If the ballot goes against you, the New Course — older and arguably tougher than the name suggests — runs over the same historic linksland at a fraction of the price and is far easier to book. It is no consolation prize.

Kingsbarns only opened in 2000 but looks four hundred years old — a sea view from every hole, and one of the most sought-after tee times in Scotland, so book it early. For a more affordable and, frankly, more characterful Sunday, the East Neuk delivers: Crail (Balcomie), run by the Crail Golfing Society founded in 1786 and one of the oldest clubs in the world, sits on a gorgeous clifftop, and Elie— James Braid's home course — opens with a blind drive over a hill so total that the starter uses a submarine periscope, salvaged from HMS Excalibur, to see when the green is clear. Both are around £95 and pure fun. The big modern Dumbarnie Links nearby is the other strong option.

Stay in St Andrews itself — the walkable old town, the university, the pubs, and the golf on the doorstep. For the East Neuk villages and a quieter, cheaper bed, Crail or Anstruther (whose harbour chip shop is worth the trip on its own) are lovely bases. See our full Fife golf guide, or build the weekend in the planner.