Put your personal stamp on Royal Troon's famous hole.
If you want to play the famed Postage Stamp hole on your Scotland golf vacation, head for the country’s southwest coast at Royal Troon Golf Club, which has hosted the British Open eight times.
There, on the club’s Old Course, which largely runs parallel to the sea, you’ll find the highlight of the round, number eight, the world-renowned and often imitated Postage Stamp. The club changed the hole’s name from Ailsa after Golden Age designer Willie Park described it as, “a pitching surface skimmed down to the size of a postage stamp.”
From the championship tees, the dune-top to dune-top hole measures just 123 yards and calls for a high-lofted shot to land softly on the barely 27-foot wide green.
With the sea safely beyond the dunes, it’s the wind and five formidable bunkers that can give players fits. Precision — and good fortune — is a must, because the vertical-walled bunkers are frighteningly deep. Whatever you score, take it proudly for, as the locals say, Postage Stamp is, “the hardest stamp in the world to lick.”
If you’re up to the challenge, keep in mind that visitors are permitted only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and, to play the Old Course, the maximum allowable handicaps are 30 for women and 20 for men.
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