Play Competitive Golf in Scotland

Scotland hosts hundreds of amateur golf open competitions each year, with singles, pairs and team events played across the most concentrated and historically significant golfing landscape in the world. From the Old Course at St Andrews — which will host the 155th Open Championship in July 2027, the 31st time the championship has been staged there — to the great Highland links at Royal Dornoch and the resort courses at Gleneagles, Scotland's open calendar runs from St Andrews and Carnoustie down to East Lothian's "Golf Coast" and out to Ayrshire's Open rota courses. Whether you're searching for Scottish golf opens by region or planning a multi-venue trip, our 2026 calendar helps you find the right event.

Golf has been played in Scotland for at least six centuries — Archbishop John Hamilton's 1552 charter granting St Andrews townspeople the right to play on the links is among the earliest surviving documents, and references to golf at Dornoch and Dunbar predate that. The country invented the 18-hole round (the Old Course's reduction from 22 to 18 holes in 1764 set the global standard), hosted the first Open Championship at Prestwick in 1860, and produced the architects who shaped golf around the world: Old Tom Morris, his apprentice Donald Ross, the Great Triumvirate of Vardon, Braid and J.H. Taylor, and modern figures like Tom Doak, Mackenzie & Ebert and Clayton, DeVries & Pont. With nearly 600 clubs and one of the highest courses-per-capita ratios in the world, Scotland is a genuine golfing pilgrimage — and its amateur open calendar offers the chance to play and compete on courses where the game's history is still being written.

The Old Course at St Andrews is the oldest and most important golf course in the world. Golf has been played on the St Andrews links since at least the 15th century, and the modern 18-hole round was created here in 1764, when William St Clair of Roslin reduced the original 22-hole layout. The course is held in trust by the St Andrews Links Trust under an act of Parliament and is genuinely public — anyone with a handicap can enter the daily ballot. The Open Championship has been played here 30 times since 1873 (more than any other venue), and is returning for the 31st time from 15-18 July 2027 — exactly 100 years after Bobby Jones's wire-to-wire amateur victory in 1927. The 2027 Open follows Cameron Smith's 2022 win in front of record crowds at the 150th playing. Walk this course and you pass the Swilcan Bridge, the Road Hole (17th), the Valley of Sin (front of the 18th), Hell Bunker on the 14th, and the Principal's Nose — landmarks every serious golfer carries in their head. Recent Mackenzie & Ebert restoration work ahead of 2027 has added 132 yards and restored historic playing routes.

Royal Dornoch Golf Club sits on the Dornoch Firth in the Highlands, and is one of the truly great links in the world — currently ranked No. 2 in Golf Digest's Top 100 Courses outside the USA. Golf has been played here since at least 1616 (a document recording expenses for the young John, 13th Earl of Sutherland's golf clubs is the earliest evidence), the club was formed in 1877, and Royal status was conferred by Edward VII in 1906. Old Tom Morris laid out the first 18 holes in 1886, and Donald Ross — born in Dornoch in 1872 — served as the club's first professional and "keeper of the green" from 1893 to 1898 before emigrating to America, where he designed Pinehurst No. 2 and over 400 other courses, carrying Dornoch's domed-green template with him. John Sutherland, Club Secretary for 58 years, designed the 12th hole (named in his memory), and 1920 Open Champion George Duncan redesigned the 6th to 11th holes after WWII. Royal Dornoch has hosted the British Amateur (1985), the Scottish Amateur (1985, 2000, 2012, 2023), and the R&A Women's and Men's Senior Amateur Championships (2022). The Carnegie Shield, presented by Andrew Carnegie of Skibo Castle in 1901, is one of amateur golf's most recognisable trophies and is still played for every August.

Gleneagles, in the foothills of the Ochil Hills in Perthshire, is one of the very few resorts in Britain to boast three top-100 ranked courses on the same 850-acre estate. The King's Course was designed by James Braid (five-time Open Champion) and opened on 1 May 1919 — Alister MacKenzie called it Braid's "crowning achievement." The Queen's, also a Braid layout, was completed in 1925. The PGA Centenary Course (originally the Monarch's) was designed by Jack Nicklaus in 1993 with Ron Kirby — Nicklaus called the land "the finest parcel of land in the world I have ever been given to work with." The PGA Centenary hosted the 2014 Ryder Cup (Europe 16½ – USA 11½, captain Paul McGinley's victory secured by rookie Jamie Donaldson) and the 2019 Solheim Cup (Europe 14½ – USA 13½). At 7,262 yards from the championship tees, the PGA Centenary is the longest inland course in Scotland.

Spey Bay Golf Club, at the mouth of the River Spey on the Moray Firth coast, was designed by Ben Sayers (a longtime North Berwick professional with twelve top-ten Open finishes) and opened in 1907. Its 18 holes are routed over raised storm-beach ridges that accumulated some 6,000 years ago during a period of higher sea level, with fairways running in shallow valleys between gorse-clad ridges of boulders and pebbles — a unique geological setting among Scotland's links. Former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was a member, and his championship trophy still hangs in the clubhouse. In 2023 the course was purchased by Links Golf Club (LinksDAO), the online golf collective, and is being transformed by architects Clayton, DeVries & Pont into a fully reversible 18-hole championship layout with up to 22 greens and five different routings — a world-first feature in Scottish links golf. The first reversible holes opened for play in 2025.

Kilmacolm Golf Club, founded in 1891 in the village of Kilmacolm 30 minutes west of Glasgow in Renfrewshire, has an architectural pedigree that belies its modest 5,961-yard yardage. Willie Campbell, professional at neighbouring Ranfurly Castle, laid out the original nine holes. Willie Fernie of Troon redesigned the layout in 1908 after additional land was acquired. James Braid completed the present design in 1924. The classic moorland course sits at 400 feet above sea level, with fairways lined by bracken, heather, gorse and pines, and panoramic views across the Renfrewshire hills. Eleven-time major winner Walter Hagen played an exhibition match here in 1937 and described Kilmacolm as "a very pleasant golfing place." European Ryder Cup Captain Bernard Gallacher has also endorsed the course. A former club captain memorably called it "the finest village golf club in the country."

Dunbar Golf Club, founded on 20 December 1856 at the Town Hall by six gentlemen led by Captain George Warrender (an earlier Dunbar Golfing Society had been recorded in 1794), occupies a narrow strip of true linksland between the old red sandstone deer park wall and the rocky shoreline of the Firth of Forth in East Lothian. Old Tom Morris extended the original 15-hole layout to 18 holes in 1880 and refined it again in 1894. James Braid and Ben Sayers of North Berwick completed the present 6,425-yard layout in 1922-24, adding 61 new bunkers. Dunbar has hosted Old Tom Morris vs Willie Park (1863), the 1903 six-Open-Champions exhibition (Braid, J.H. Taylor, Arnaud Massy, Sandy Herd, Willie Fernie and Jack White), the first PGA Championship on the European Tour in 1968 (now contested at Wentworth as the Tour's flagship event), the Scottish Amateur, British Boys', British Ladies' and Ladies Home Internationals, and it remains a Final Qualifying course for the Open whenever it returns to Muirfield. The course is on the Old Tom Morris Trail and is consistently rated among the best in East Lothian's "Scotland's Golf Coast."

Scotland's appeal extends far beyond golf. St Andrews offers medieval streets, the ruins of the largest cathedral in Scotland, and Britain's oldest university (founded 1413). The Highlands around Royal Dornoch deliver coastal scenery, castles (Dunrobin, Skibo), and dolphin-watching on the Dornoch Firth. Speyside's whisky trail runs alongside Spey Bay, with distilleries including Macallan, Glenfiddich and Glenlivet within easy reach. Gleneagles sits in the heart of Perthshire — Stirling Castle, Bannockburn, Loch Tay and the Trossachs are all within an hour. East Lothian's Golf Coast combines Muirfield, North Berwick, Gullane and Dunbar with the seabird colonies on Bass Rock and the medieval ruins of Tantallon Castle.

Whether exploring Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile, walking the West Highland Way, sampling single malts, or simply admiring the country's lochs and glens, amateur golfers will find that playing open competitions in Scotland offers more than a tournament — it delivers the complete sporting and cultural pilgrimage to the country where the modern game began.