Editorial Standards & How We Verify
Last updated 22 June 2026.
Birdie Brae exists to get the boring, important details right — what a round actually costs, whether visitors can play, how to book. That only works if you can trust the numbers. Here is exactly how we research and check them, and what to do when we get something wrong.
Who writes this
Everything is written and edited by Gary, a Scottish golfer who plays these courses. Articles carry a real byline — never an invented persona — and link back to a short bio. If you want to know who stands behind a claim, it's a person, not a brand.
How we verify green fees
The green fee is the number that matters most, so it gets the most discipline:
- Each course has one canonical fee record — a single high-season and low-season figure. Every place a price appears on the site (the course page, the homepage picks, the Green Fee Tracker, the FAQs) reads from that one record, so they can't disagree with each other.
- Fees are checked against the club's own published rates for the current year, and each course carries a last verified date so you can see how fresh the figure is. Once a record passes about a year old, the page stops calling it “verified” and labels it “last reviewed” instead — because club fees are usually republished every spring.
- An automated check runs on every build and fails the deploy if any price shown on a page falls outside that course's canonical record. “Verified” means a check actually ran — not that someone once said so.
- Where a figure genuinely isn't public — slope ratings, some buggy or twilight rates — we leave it blank and say “contact the club” rather than inventing a number.
Sourcing the rest
History, course facts and local detail are checked against the club's own material and recognised references. Course photography is licensed (Creative Commons, with attribution). We don't publish fabricated reviews or star ratings.
Corrections
We will get things wrong — fees change, courses close, a hole gets re-measured. Every course page has a “Report a change” link that emails us directly, and you can always reach us via the contact page. We fix verified errors quickly and update the “last verified” date when we do.
Affiliate independence
Some links earn us a commission. They never change which courses we recommend or how we rank them — the full policy is on our affiliate disclosure page.