Royal Musselburgh Golf Club

Royal Musselburgh is the sixth oldest golf club in the world: its Old Club Cup carries winners’ names back to 1774 and is the oldest trophy still competed for anywhere in the game.

For a century and a half the club played on the old links at Musselburgh alongside everybody else, and by the 1920s that ground was hopelessly crowded. In 1925 the club moved a few miles east to the Prestongrange estate at Prestonpans, taking a lease on the house and laying out a new course in the park. James Braid did the design, with F.G. Hawtree, and it has been remodelled since.

What it asks of you

Par 70 over 6,254 yards, which makes it one of the shorter courses in East Lothian and, on a windless day, one of the more forgiving. It is parkland, not links: mature trees, some elevation change across the estate, and views over the Firth of Forth from the higher holes.

The shelter is the real difference from its neighbours. On a day when the wind makes Muirfield and Gullane a struggle, Prestongrange is playable, and that is the practical argument for having it on an East Lothian itinerary.

Greens in regulation are achievable for most handicaps, so the scoring happens on the putting surfaces, which are the club’s strongest asset. The closing five holes are the stretch reviewers single out as the best of the round.

What players say about it

Visitors are welcome by arrangement and the review record is healthy. 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 greens draw the strongest and most consistent praise, described as exceptional and kept in condition through the season.
• The welcome is mentioned in nearly every account. Staff offering advice to visiting players comes up often enough to be a defining feature of the club.
• Variety across the round is praised, and the closing five holes in particular.
• Shelter from the wind is valued by visitors who have just been blown around a links up the coast.

What comes up against

• Length is the main reservation. At a little over 6,200 yards it will not stretch a good player, and some accounts say so plainly.
• It is parkland in the most famous stretch of links country in the world, and visitors who came for the coast sometimes feel they made a category error.
• The course does not carry the drama of its neighbours, and reviewers who rank it against them mark it down for that rather than for anything it does badly.
• The royal title and the 1774 trophy belong to a club whose course is nothing like the ground on which that history was made.

Getting there and when to go

Prestonpans is around twenty minutes east of Edinburgh, with a station on the North Berwick line, and half an hour from the airport. The old Musselburgh links, Muirfield and the Gullane courses are all within twenty minutes, which makes this an easy addition to an East Lothian trip.

The course plays all year, and the sheltered parkland setting makes it the sensible choice on a windy day. Late spring and early autumn are the best of it. Visitor booking is by arrangement.

Green fees

Rates and visitor tee times are handled by the club and vary by season. See the club’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 club, the Old Club Cup and the 1925 move, and the club’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 club 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.