The Duke's Course, St Andrews provides a quite different golfing experience from its seaside links cousins, all of whom are located closer to the seashore in St Andrews. The Duke’s lies two miles inland, laid out in the Mount Melville Estate, originally home to the Younger family (of brewing fame). Rather than an open layout weaving through sand dunes, here the course exudes a distinctly more gorse and tree-lined "highland" feel.

The Duke's course sweeps majestically through open rural countryside as well as into attractive pockets of woodland. Birch and pine trees, plenty of gorse bushes, rough-edged authentically designed bunkering and willowy (but unforgiving) rough, all combine to give you plenty of golfing challenges from the tee and around the greens. Wayward hitting from the tee could cost you a shot or two; erratic putting on the large undulating greens could do the same. The pleasantly undulating terrain contains one or two stiffish climbs, but generally this big-dimension, roaming layout is not too strenuous a course to play. It makes some physical demands as you journey round, but never exhaustingly so.

The revamped back-nine has significantly improved the overall layout, taking you into new territory, and an expansive loop located below the clubhouse. The finishing flourish includes two testing parkland holes in front of the clubhouse. From this lofty estate, you will enjoy stunning views back down to the spires of St Andrews, across the Eden and Tay estuaries to Angus and out across the wide expanse of the North Sea.