The Old Course at St Andrews Review

Nobody designed the Old Course. Sheep, wind, Daw Anderson and Old Tom Morris shaped it between the town charter of 1552 and the Victorian era, and the result breaks every rule an architect would write down. Seven greens are shared by two holes each and are the size of tennis courts. There are more than a hundred bunkers, most small, deep and invisible from the tee, and the correct line off several tees is a hotel roof or a gorse bush rather than the flag.

First time visitors usually play it badly and blame the course, because the fairways are enormous and the trouble only shows itself once the ball has stopped. Played again, with a caddie explaining that the safe road home runs through the left half of the world, what it is doing becomes obvious. The seventeenth, the Road Hole, asks for a drive over the corner of a hotel and then an approach to a green with a bunker eating into its front and a paved road waiting behind, and it is still the most frightening par four in golf.

The Open returns in July 2027 for the thirty first time. A high season round costs 355 pounds, the ballot that fills about half the tee sheet is free to enter and charges the same fee, and anyone at all may apply. The links closes on Sundays.