St. Andrews’ new tee time system? They think it’s a hit

Plenty of nostalgia was cast aside this time a year ago when the St. Andrews Links Trust issued a new decree on how it would fill its tee times. 

The singles queue of old — where patrons would camp out in line overnight, learning their fate at sunrise — is gone. The singles queue of new? That’s done digitally, the evening prior, without the hassle of sleeping on the sidewalk. And 13 months in, the Links Trust views it as a major success. 

Since its inception, the new singles queue has placed more than 3,600 visiting golfers into open slots on the tee sheet. The majority of daily tee times are taken by locals or dished out through the daily ballot, which visitors can enter two days in advance. But every day there are empty spots in a three-ball, or two spots alongside a local twosome. While the old system did the same job of filling those spots with singles, the new one does it much more efficiently the night prior, all in a digital priority rank, making it possible to get a good night’s sleep before one of the more cherished tee times in the sport.

How the new St. Andrews tee time system works

Hopeful golfers enter their name between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. the day prior, actually showing up to the Old Course Pavilion near the 1st tee to submit their entry. To ensure that players are actually in St. Andrews at the time of entry, submissions require a photograph from the Pavilion. 

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That evening, a random drawing from the singles queue takes place and those selected are notified. At that point, they’re free to plan their day much more efficiently than, say, packing a pillow to sleep overnight on the pavement in 40 degree temps. That is the main driver behind this system — to make it more comfortable (and streamlined) to dish out the extra spots on the tee sheet.

According to the Links Trust, nearly half the entries (6,592) came from golfers from the United States. From that sub-group, 2,966 gained tee times. With that as our sample size, visiting Americans succeeded at a 45 percent clip, nearly a coin-flip. 

While each drawing is random, the new system promotes the idea that if you spend enough nights/days with the town of St. Andrews as your headquarters, you are bound to luck out eventually. We don’t want to get you too hopeful on the gambler’s fallacy, because no benefit is given to entrants who have tried consecutive nights, but the more times you enter, the greater the chance you have of succeeding.

Overall, the success rate skews more toward 25 percent. On average, about 12 to 20 members of the queue are getting selected, with the most trafficked day of 2024 pulling in 227 entries. The good news: Any golfers dismayed by not being selected still have six other St. Andrews courses to choose from.