Culture & Stories

From 'dreich' to 'dormie', 'gorse' to 'the 19th hole' — a glossary of the golf and Scottish terms you'll actually hear on a course in Scotland, explained without the usual reverence.

Three hundred pounds, a 4:32 am queue in the dark, and one of the strangest rounds you'll ever play. The answer on whether the Home of Golf is actually worth the trip.

Scotland has produced some of the most significant golfers in the history of the game — from the Morrises, who essentially defined professional golf, to the modern champions who still carry the tradition. Here's the essential list.

It rains in Scotland. If you're visiting to play golf, you will almost certainly play at least one wet round. This is fine — it is genuinely fine — and with the right preparation, a wet round on a Scottish links is a better experience than a dry round on most other courses in the world.

Scottish golf has accumulated centuries of tradition, superstition, and unwritten rules that no rulebook covers. Some are genuine cultural customs. Some are club-specific. A few are national. All of them are worth knowing before you turn up at a strange club and inadvertently do something wrong.

Scotland has around 600 golf courses today, and had more once. Some disappeared — some to war, some to development, some simply to indifference. The ones that survive in name only are part of the country's golfing archaeology.