The Case for Scotland: Why Your Golf Society Should Come Here Instead of Portugal

A letter, more or less.

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I know the Portugal argument. I have heard it at the AGM every year since around 2009. The sun, the near-certainty of not abandoning a round after fourteen holes because of horizontal rain, the all-inclusive hotel that removes the logistical burden from the captain's shoulders, the flights from Stansted or Bristol that cost less than the shuttle bus to Gleneagles. It is not a bad argument. Portugal is perfectly good for golf.

But I want to make a different case, and I want to make it honestly, which means starting with the thing everyone pretends isn't true: the Algarve is not actually cheaper once you've done the full arithmetic.

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The Arithmetic

A four-night Algarve package in season, with flights, a shared room at a golf hotel, and five rounds of golf, tends to come in at around £600–900 per head. That is not a criticism — it is what it is, and some of those packages are excellent value. But the maths sits at around £150–225 per day, and that is before you have paid for the evening meals that fall outside the half-board window, the afternoon drinks, the two taxis from a resort that is not quite walkable to anywhere interesting, and the course where you discover the "golf package" greens fee applies to the layout that doesn't get the irrigation in August.

A Scotland trip, built properly, looks like this: a self-catering house in East Lothian or Angus sleeping 12 people costs around £1,800–2,500 for six nights. Split that by 12 and you're at £150–210 for the accommodation. Breakfasts in the house cost perhaps £8–10 per head. A car from Edinburgh airport and shared fuel costs around £200 for the week split across 12, which is effectively nothing per head. Green fees at serious Scottish courses — Carnoustie, North Berwick, Gullane — run £130–220 per round. Three rounds at that level and two at mid-range courses gives a green fees total of perhaps £550–700 per head for the week.

All in: around £850–1,200 per head for a week in Scotland with proper courses and a proper house. Against £600–900 for four nights in Portugal with courses that are, in the politest possible terms, designed to be played rather than remembered.

The price difference is smaller than you think, and the quality difference is rather larger.

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The Courses

Portugal has good golf. The Algarve has some fine courses — Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo — and they are expensive. The mid-market options are pleasant enough.

But Scotland has Carnoustie. It has Dornoch. It has North Berwick, Crail, Blairgowrie, Machrihanish, Elie, Gullane, Lundin Links, Montrose, and another 80 or 90 courses I have not mentioned that are worth the journey in their own right. It has links golf — actual links golf on actual links turf, with wind that comes in off the North Sea at the angle it decides rather than the angle you had planned for, and greens that run differently in the afternoon than they did in the morning because the wind shifted.

There is nothing in the Algarve that plays like Carnoustie at close to full difficulty on a Tuesday morning in June when the wind is coming from the south-west. That is not a boast; it is a description. The golf is harder, more various, more memorable, and more likely to produce the conversations that are still happening three years later in the changing room.

The variety also matters for a group. Not everyone in a society is playing to the same standard or with the same priorities. Scotland's range — marquee links at the top, proper heathland in the middle, honest municipal at the bottom — means a week can include something for every level of player and every level of ambition without anyone feeling they have been short-changed or asked to play somewhere embarrassing.

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The 19th Hole

This is, in the end, the actual argument.

A proper Scottish clubhouse 19th hole is a different institution from what you find at a resort. The bar at a Scottish links club has a particular quality: it has been there for a long time, it is run by people who play the course, it knows what a single malt costs and is not embarrassed to sell it at that price, and it expects you to sit for a while.

Resort hotel 19th holes are not 19th holes. They are bars that golfers visit. A Scottish links 19th hole is a room that has been absorbing rounds of golf for generations, and that accumulated character is what a golf society trip is actually seeking, even when it thinks it is seeking sun.

The difference is audible. The conversation in a Scottish clubhouse after a difficult round on a difficult course is different from the conversation around a poolside bar at a resort where the golf was fine. One of them produces the kind of afternoon that becomes the story that gets told at the Christmas dinner for the next decade. I will leave you to decide which one.

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The Weather

Yes. The weather. I was going to pretend this didn't need addressing, but of course it does.

Scotland in May, June, or September is often — not always, often — perfectly good. Days are long. The light in the late afternoon on a Scottish links is the light that makes golf photographers redundant, because a camera phone can take a picture that looks like a painting. The cold is real; the rain is possible; the wind is guaranteed on a links course and this is a feature, not a fault.

What Scotland cannot promise is that you will finish all 18 holes without putting on a waterproof. Portugal can promise that. It is a genuine difference and you should weigh it honestly.

What I would say is this: the best day I have ever had on a golf course was on a Scottish links in June, wind at our backs on the way out and into our faces on the way home, low sun in the evening, three pints in the bar afterwards. The second-best day had similar conditions. The days in warm, still air on a resort course in the south of France were all fine. None of them are the story I tell.

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The Two Things That Make It Work

If you take the trip — and I am suggesting you should — two things determine whether it succeeds.

The first is the accommodation. Book a house rather than rooms. The evening in the living room of a rented farmhouse, with everyone around the table for prize-giving and the captain's toast and whatever bottle someone has been carrying for three days waiting for the right moment, is the evening that makes it worth coming back. A hotel with 12 separate rooms and a bar that closes at midnight is not the same thing.

The second is the courses. Don't spend all the money on one marquee round and fill the rest of the week with courses that feel like a consolation. Build a week where every round is worth the green fee in its own right. Scotland makes this possible at a price that — as the arithmetic shows — is not wildly different from what you were already thinking of spending.

The Algarve will still be there. It will be warm. The golf will be fine. But if your society has never played on a Scottish links, the case for doing it at least once is, I would suggest, rather stronger than the AGM vote usually reflects.

Come and see.