St Andrews Links
golf course in Scotland
St Andrews Links is a historic golf links complex in the town of St Andrews in Scotland, where golf has been played since the 15th century, earning it the nickname "home of golf". There are eight public golf courses owned by Fife Council and operated by the St Andrews Links Trust charity. An area north of the town holds six adjacent courses: the Old, New, Jubilee, Balgove, Eden, and Strathtyrum. The Castle Course lies one mile to the south-east, whilst the recently added Craigtoun Course sits roughly 3 miles to the south-west. The Balgove Course has nine holes, the rest 18.
The Old Course is widely considered one of the world's best and regularly hosts the Open Championship. The St Andrews Links Trust organises several amateur tournaments at the links, of which the most prestigious are the St Andrews Links Trophy for men (comprising one round on the New or Jubilee Course followed by three rounds on the Old Course) and the St Rule Trophy for women (two rounds on the New followed by one on the Old).
Several golf clubs are based at the links. The oldest and most famous of these clubs is The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (founded 1754), which co-administered the rules of golf until the R&A was spun out of it in 2004; its clubhouse is by the first hole of the Old Course. Others, with clubhouses on the block just south of the links, include the St Andrews Thistle Golf Club (founded 1817 and 1865), St Andrews Golf Club (founded 1843), The St Rule Club (golf section founded 1898), The New Golf Club (founded 1902), and St Regulus Ladies Golf Club (founded 1914).
The public source identifies “St Andrews Links” as golf course in Scotland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Andrews, Links and golf.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1972531. VIAF identifies the subject as 315170914. The Library of Congress control number is sh2011001171. Authority coordinates are 56.352, -2.818. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1754, 2004, 1817 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “St Andrews Links” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.