As the golf world’s eyes shift to Royal Troon’s Old Course this week for the 152nd British Open – ahem … Open Championship, if you please – it’s worth a look at all the top-ranked courses in Scotland.
Golfweek’s Best course-ranking program utilizes hundreds of members in our ratings panel to continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course based on a 1-10 scale. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final rating for each course.
Listed below are the top 15 courses in Scotland, as judged by those hundreds of raters. Included with each course is its average rating, location, designer(s), year opened and where it ranks on Golfweek’s Best 2024 list of top courses outside the U.S.
Nos. 1-3
Royal Dornoch Golf Club in Scotland (Courtesy of Royal Dornoch)
Nos. 4-6
Carnoustie’s Championship Course in Scotland (David Cannon/Getty Images)
Nos. 7-9
Ardfin in Scotland (Courtesy of Ardfin Estate/Simon Crawford and VisitScotland.com)
Nos. 10-12
Cruden Bay in Scotland (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
10. Cruden Bay 7.69
Where: Cruden Bay
Designer: Old Tom Morris, Archie Simpson, Tom Simpson, Herbert Fowler
Year opened: 1899
Rank among top 100 International: T45
Book your trip to Cruden Bay today
11. Loch Lomond 7.67
Where: Dunbartonshire
Designers: Jay Morrish, Tom Weiskopf
Year opened: 1993
Rank among top 100 International: 47
12. Cabot Highlands (Castle Stuart) 7.66
Where: Inverness
Designers: Gil Hanse, Mark Parsinen
Year opened: 2009
Rank among top 100 International: 48
Book your trip to Cabot Highlands today
Nos. 13-15
Royal Troon’s Old Course in Scotland (David Cannon/R&A via Getty Images)
