Musselburgh Links, The Old Golf Course

Sir John Foulis of Ravelston, an Edinburgh lawyer, wrote down what he spent on golf balls at Musselburgh in 1672, and that entry is why this nine-hole course is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest golf course in the world. Local tradition puts Mary, Queen of Scots here a century earlier.

The links were seven holes for most of their history, gained an eighth in 1832 and a ninth in 1870, and between 1874 and 1889 they shared the Open Championship with Prestwick and St Andrews, staging it six times. When the professionals of the town moved along the coast to Muirfield, the Open went with them and Musselburgh became what it still is: a municipal course that anyone can book.

What it asks of you

Par 34 over fewer than 2,900 yards from the medal tees, made up of three par threes, five short par fours and one par five. The yardage is not the interest and nobody comes here for a test of ball striking.

The fairways are long and gently undulating, dotted with soft, deep bunkers of the old kind, and the greens are large and honest. The oddity that everybody remembers is the setting: the nine holes sit inside a horse racing track, and a round involves crossing the racecourse twice. It is the sort of arrangement that would never be permitted on a new course and is exactly why this one is worth playing.

The club hires hickory clubs, and a substantial share of visitors play it that way. On a course laid out for the gutta-percha ball, hickories make more sense of the distances than modern equipment does.

What players say about it

This is a public course with a healthy review record, most of it from visitors playing it once. The notes below summarise recurring themes across specialist golf sites, traveller review pages and player discussion threads. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course. We report what comes back repeatedly rather than isolated remarks, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favour

• The history is the whole point and reviewers treat it that way. Playing the oldest course in the world, on ground that held six Opens, is what almost every account leads with.
• Hickory hire is repeatedly recommended, and the visitors who took it up are the most enthusiastic in the record.
• Conditions are better than most people expect: fairways described as running well and greens as true, for a municipal course on old ground.
• The price and the ease of booking are praised, especially in a part of Scotland where the famous neighbours are expensive and hard to get on.

What comes up against

• Greens are the most common reservation. Several accounts describe them as acceptable rather than good, and nobody compares them favourably with the Open rota courses nearby.
• Nine holes at under 2,900 yards will not hold the attention of a player looking for a serious round of golf.
• The setting inside a racecourse is charming to some and scruffy to others, and the course shares its ground rather than owning it.
• It is a curiosity for most visitors rather than a course they would return to, and reviews say so without malice.

Getting there and when to go

Musselburgh is fifteen minutes east of Edinburgh by road and is on the train line, which makes this the easiest historic course in Scotland to reach without a car. Muirfield and the Gullane courses are twenty minutes further east.

The links are open all year and booking goes through the starter. Any month works; the course is short enough that weather matters less here than on the exposed links further along the coast.

Green fees

Rates, hickory hire and tee times are handled through the starter at municipal levels. See the course’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published historical coverage for the record of play, the Open championships and the layout, and the course’s own site for access and booking. The opinion section summarises public reviews and player discussions read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The course has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.