Prestwick Golf Club: Stay Where The Open Was Born

Most golfers who play Prestwick drive in, walk the links, eat lunch, and leave. That is a fine afternoon. It is also the wrong way to do Prestwick.

The club sits right on Links Road in the town of Prestwick, steps from Glasgow Prestwick Airport, making it one of the most accessible historic courses in the world. The railway line that borders the first hole still carries passengers. The stone boundary wall that turns your opening tee shot into an immediate declaration of intent has been there since before anyone alive was born. Old Tom Morris designed and built the original 12-hole course here and was the club's Keeper of the Green from 1851 to 1864. The Open Championship was first held at Prestwick in 1860 and played here 24 times between then and 1925, second only to the Old Course at St Andrews. Six original greens and three original holes remain in the current layout. You are not playing history as a metaphor. You are playing the actual ground.

The Course

Prestwick is not for everyone, and it knows it. Blind shots, cavernous bunkers faced with railway sleepers, fairways that roll and tumble in ways no modern architect would permit or insure against. Standing on the first tee with the railway wall tight on the right and the clubhouse visible through its large windows, it is the most nervous a golfer can feel before swinging a club. The hole is called Railway for a reason. Miss right and you are done. Miss left and thick rough swallows your ball. The margin is thin and the history watching you is not shy about it.

The most famous hole is the third, Cardinal, a par 5 of 500 yards where the fairway simply ends about 300 yards from the tee as the land descends into a vast bunker about 50 yards across, buttressed by railway sleepers. Going for the green in two means carrying the whole thing. Laying up means accepting that bogey is in play. Prestwick has been presenting that choice since 1851 and has no intention of softening it.

Then comes the 5th, Himalayas. This is the world-famous blind par three where you aim at a colored sleeper on the hill that matches the tee you are playing from, take enough club for the distance, and commit. The prevailing winds push you toward five bunkers on the left side of the green, and a bell sits greenside for players to ring when they have cleared so the group behind knows it is safe to play. You fire into the sky, climb the dune, and find out. If your caddie spots from the top of the hill and claims you holed it, treat that information with extreme skepticism.

The 17th, Alps, is the oldest hole in championship golf and one of the strangest things you will ever be asked to do on a golf course. A drive down a narrow fairway sets up a long blind approach over a towering dune, with nothing to guide you but a marker on the hill and the knowledge that the Sahara bunker is waiting on the other side for anything hit short. The green is completely hidden from the fairway. Whatever club you think you need, take one more.

The clubhouse itself is worth the trip without hitting a shot. Golf Illustrated once wrote that lunch at Prestwick is arguably the finest golf lunch in the world. The Smoke Room and Card Room are exactly what they sound like: proper rooms in a proper golf club that has been doing this longer than anywhere else on earth. The walls carry memorabilia, portraits of past captains, and artifacts from the earliest days of the game. A stone cairn to the west of the clubhouse marks the spot where the first Open Championship tee shot was struck in 1860. Most people walk past it without stopping. Give it a moment.

The Renovation

The clubhouse has been through a significant upgrade. Plans approved by South Ayrshire Council include moving and expanding the restaurant to give visitors better views onto the greens, a new stairway to the first floor, and improved facilities throughout. The upstairs is closed during the 2025 season with the full reveal timed to coincide with the club's 175th anniversary in 2026. The Dining Room and Smoke Room downstairs remain fully operational in the meantime, which is no hardship. When the renovation is complete, the views from that dining room overlooking the 1st tee and 18th green will be something worth booking a flight for on their own.

Number 17: Stay on the Course

Across Links Road from the clubhouse sits Number 17, the property Prestwick Golf Club recently acquired and converted from the former Golf View Hotel into a private Dormy House for visiting golfers. It reopened in April 2024. Eight ensuite bedrooms, a Residents Lounge on the first floor with views over the course, and a Captain's Suite at the top of the house. Breakfast is included each morning and the property has welcomed golfers in one form or another for decades. The memorabilia inside tells you immediately that this is not a hotel that happens to be near a golf course. It is a golf house, full stop.

You book Number 17 only with a tee time paid in full at Prestwick Golf Club, which is exactly the right way to think about it. You are not booking a hotel with golf attached. You are booking the whole experience with a bed close enough to the first tee that you can walk there without getting in a car. Exclusive use of the full house for groups of up to eight is available at a flat nightly rate, with a dining room set up for catered meals and the kind of evening that starts with a recap of the round and ends considerably later.

The Case for Prestwick

Nothing competes with the Old Course as a pilgrimage. That argument is settled. But Prestwick offers something the Old Course cannot: certainty. There is no ballot, no lottery, no anxious wait by the phone. You book your tee time, you book Number 17, and you show up ready to play one of the most historically significant courses in golf without the variable of whether you are actually going to get on it.

Royal Troon is minutes away. Dundonald Links, Western Gailes, and Turnberry are all within easy reach. You can build an Ayrshire week of championship links golf anchored right here and never repeat a course, never share the ground with a tour bus, and never feel like you are rushing. The golfer who wants to go deep into Ayrshire rather than chase the St Andrews ballot has the better trip. They also have a better story. Playing Prestwick is playing the place where professional golf began. That is either enough or it is not, and if it is not, we cannot help you.