Scotland Course Conditions - 2019

[Billy__Baroo]

I'm heading over to Scotland in just under 2 weeks (!) and I'm curious what the course conditions are like currently? I've been watching the forecast religiously and it looks like they've been receiving a good amount of rain. I know last year was extremely dry, which is why the Erik Lang and NLU footage is so browned out. Just looking for any local or recent tourist info on how the courses are playing at the time being? For reference, we'll be up in Inverness, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews over 10 days.

[ceejay81]

I am interested in this as well. I am headed out there for the 2nd half of July to get married and play some golf! We'll start off in Aberdeen, then we will head to St Andrews, and then finishing off the 2 week trek in Edinburgh.

[RCGoBlue]

I just got back from St. Andrews where we had lots of rain. Everything was lush and green but still very firm.

[jonnymc44]

Links courses are sand-based so will always drain very well. They might look green but will still play firm and fast as @RCGoBlue mentions. It only takes some warm weather and some strong winds to dry it out very quickly. You'll love it.

[Chanceman]

I played Brora and Royal Dornoch a couple of weeks ago and both were in pretty good nick.

[Shrinkwr4p]

I played Moray Old (Lossiemouth) on May 31st.

Really enjoyed it. It's a terrific links but it's a long way from recovering from last summer's drought. They were using preferred lies and it would have been a miserable experience otherwise. Greens and aprons were great but the fairways were bare. Can't see it being hugely better within a month.

[Clambake]

Just returned from a trip where we played the Old Course, Jubilee, Carnoustie, Kingsbarns, Castle Stuart, Brora, Dornoch, Royal Troon, and Prestwick. The only course that showed any issue was Castle Stuart, as they were heavily sanding fairways the day we were there; fortunately most of the work was going on after we played holes although there were a couple where we had to deal with it. The greens there were also the slowest we played - they rolled fine but were just really slow. Other than that, all the courses were in fine shape. They were fairly green and only browning a tiny bit in some areas, but still gave a lot of roll on the fairways.

[tiderider]

any updates? ... heading over next week for 10 days ...

[duffer987]

^Moray Old and Fraserburgh were in "preferred lies" condition (although when we played it we played the ball down and really only had a couple bad lies) as they are still suffering the effects of last year.

Every other course we played was as fine as you'd expect. Troon had slow running greens, but that's about it.

I have a link to my Flickr in my trip thread if you want to take a look - you'll see except for those two everyone looks good.

[Billy__Baroo]

> @tiderider said:

> any updates? ... heading over next week for 10 days ...

Conditions were incredible everywhere we went! Exactly what we wanted out of each of the courses. The older ones were a bit more rugged, but pure, and the newer ones were a little more "Americanized"; however, every place had absolutely pristine greens. There wasn't a single time where the ball didn't roll pure and true. Nairn had the roughest fairways, but they warned us about that due to renovations and recovery from last seasons ridiculously dry summer. Trump Aberdeen was overly manicured, but it has a serious wow factor. I've never played a course quite like it. Also, even with all of the rain they've had so far this season, every course was still playing firm and fast. Drivers down wind would roll out 350+ on the regular! Also, as I'm sure you've already read/know, the greens over there definitely do run a bit slower. It took me a round or two (or three) to really get the speeds down. I couldn't get a ball to the cup! Also also...if you've never been over there before, I'd recommend taking a caddy early in the trip just to get some local knowledge on playing the wind. It's always a factor no matter what the forecast says for the day and learning to deal with it right away will help with the rest of the trip. We took a caddy at Dornoch and he forced me to pipe a 6 iron on a 150 yard par 3 directly into the wind and I knocked it to 15 feet. Because of him, I hit all 4 par 3's in reg (didn't make a single birdie, though!) Enjoy your trip!