The Old Course at St Andrews is a course you visit before you understand what you're looking at. Seven of the eighteen greens are shared. The fairways are wide enough to hit a driver miles off-line and still find short grass. The wind shifts mid-round at least half the time. Nothing about it conforms to the modern idea of a championship layout, and that is exactly the point — the course was here before the modern idea existed.
What makes a round on the Old Course memorable isn't the score; it's the sequence. The Swilcan Bridge crossing the 1st and 18th. The blind tee shot on the 17th over the Old Course Hotel. The Road Hole bunker that has decided more Open Championships than any other single feature in golf. The sense, walking up the 18th, that every great player has walked the same line. None of this can be engineered into a newer course.
Practical realities for visitors: the green fee is £295 in 2026. Caddies are strongly advised — the lines off many tees are not the lines a yardage book suggests. Most visitors enter the Daily Ballot the day before, with success rates that swing from around 25% in peak July to 70%+ in shoulder months. The Advance Reservation system, opened 12 months before play, sells out within hours for peak dates. Buggies are not permitted except for medical reasons.
Worth playing once for any committed golfer. Worth revisiting only for those for whom the cost is incidental. The Old Course is reliably *significant* rather than reliably *enjoyable* — and those are not the same thing.
