Key takeaways
- Eighteen is an accident of one course editing itself in 1764, not a design decision.
- Before that, St Andrews played 22 holes: twelve laid in a line, ten of them played twice.
- The 1764 round was 18 holes but still only ten actual holes, eight of them played twice.
- It took roughly a century for courses to actually have eighteen separate holes.
- The whisky-bottle story is folklore. The documented reason is that four holes were judged too short.
Ask why a golf course has eighteen holes and you will usually get the one about a bottle of Scotch containing eighteen measures, so a round lasted exactly as long as the whisky. It is a good story and there is no evidence for it.
The real answer is duller, better documented, and considerably stranger: for about a hundred years, an eighteen-hole round did not mean eighteen holes.
How many holes did early courses have?
Whatever suited the ground. There was no standard at all, and the variation recorded by Scottish Golf History is wider than most people expect.
| Course | Holes |
|---|---|
| Leith Links | 5 in 1744, 2 added later |
| Bruntsfield Links | 5, expanding to 6 in 1818 |
| Blackheath | 5, expanding to 7 in 1844 |
| Musselburgh Old Course | 7 for years, an 8th in 1832, a 9th in 1870 |
| Montrose Links | 7 by 1810, 14 by 1825, 11 by 1849, 25 by 1866 |
| St Andrews (Old Course) | 12 by 1764, probably much earlier |
Montrose is the one to sit with. That course went from seven holes to twenty-five and back down again inside sixty years. Nobody thought a course had a correct length, because the idea had not been invented yet.
What happened at St Andrews in 1764?
An editing decision. The Old Course had twelve holes laid out in a line along the peninsula. Ten of them were played twice, once going out and again coming back on the same greens in the opposite direction, and the other two were played once each. That made a round of twenty-two.
In 1764 the members judged the first four holes too short, and combined them into two. That removed two holes from the outward run and two from the way back, and the round dropped from twenty-two to eighteen.
So eighteen was a remainder. Nobody chose it, and nothing about it was considered significant at the time.
Was the course actually eighteen holes?
No, and this is the part that gets left out. After 1764 the round was eighteen holes but the course still had only ten, of which eight were played twice.
An eighteen-hole round and an eighteen-hole course were separate things for about a century. Scottish Golf History is explicit that it would be a hundred years before there were eighteen actual holes and other courses followed suit.
Prestwick was built in 1851 with twelve holes and did not look unusual. Lanark, between 1851 and 1853, played six holes three times over, which happened to total eighteen entirely by accident. When they added a hole it became a round of twenty-one, and nobody minded.
When did eighteen become the rule?
The R&A wrote it into the Rules in 1842, before the course itself could deliver it. Rule 1 read that one round of the Links, or 18 holes, is reckoned a match unless otherwise stipulated.
That wording was repeated in the 1858 and 1875 rules, then dropped from the 1888 edition. The number was normalized long before it was universal, and the codification wobbled for decades after.
It was not laid down as a stipulated round in the Rules of Golf until 1950, which is startlingly late for the single most recognizable fact about the sport.
How did the Old Course get to eighteen real holes?
Through double greens, gradually. In 1832 the Chief of Clanranald suggested them, and the 1836 plan of the Old Course drawn by William Chalmers, which hangs in the R&A clubhouse, already shows two holes on the fifth green, Hole O'Cross, shared with the thirteenth.
In 1855 Daw Anderson, a St Andrews ball-maker who ran the Old Course from 1850 to 1855, created a double green at the seventh. Piece by piece, shared greens were split into separate targets until the round and the course finally matched.
The famous huge double greens at St Andrews are the fossil of that process. They are not a design flourish, they are what is left of a course that used to be played in both directions.
What is a links course?
A soil type, not a view. Scottish Golf History traces the word to the Anglo-Saxon hlinc, recorded around 931 AD and meaning a ridge. It originally described any rough grassy area between the sea and the farmland, and only later came to mean a golf course at all.
The soil is the whole point. True links land is sandy, which drains well and gives a firm surface year round, and the lack of moisture produces grass with short blades and long roots. That is also what makes links rough so punishing: wispy long grass that ruins a lie even when the ball sits up.
Genuine links courses are rarer than the word suggests. Of all the golf courses in Scotland, only 92, about 17 percent, are true links, although that group includes most of the historic ones. Parkland courses account for 61 percent and moorland for 17 percent. So the terrain that produced the eighteen-hole round is a minority even in the country that invented it.
Why does a round go out and come back?
Because the land at St Andrews left no other option. The Old Course was laid along a narrow peninsula, which meant holes could only run in a line away from the clubhouse and then back along the same strip. Golfers played out to the far end and then played the same holes home.
That geography is still printed on every scorecard in the world. The front nine is the outward half and the back nine the inward half, and the words "out" and "in" at the top of the two score columns are a direct description of walking to the end of a sandy ridge and walking back. A modern parkland course arranged in two loops has no physical reason to use those words. It uses them because a strip of Scottish coastline decided the shape of the game before anyone thought to write a rule about it.
Why did the rest of the world copy it?
Because St Andrews had the authority, and because the clubs that mattered adopted it. Once the foremost clubs used eighteen, the number set the norm, and new courses were built to match rather than to fit their own ground.
That is the quiet cost of standardization. Before 1764, a course was shaped by its land. After eighteen became the expectation, land had to be found or made to fit eighteen.
What about the whisky story?
There is no evidence for it, and the chronology argues against it. The 1764 change is documented as a judgment that four holes were too short, and the decision produced a number nobody remarked on for decades.
A story invented to explain a number is usually invented after the number exists. That is the shape of this one: a neat explanation attached retrospectively to an untidy accident.
The R&A's own account of the question is published as Why Are There Eighteen Holes? by Peter N. Lewis, which is the place to go if you want the long version from the governing body.
Was golf even Scottish?
Less certainly than the eighteen-hole story suggests. Britannica runs a section headed "Scots as inventors: a popular fallacy", and the evidence it gathers is pictorial.
The belief rests on three Scottish acts of Parliament from the second half of the fifteenth century banning the game, in 1457, 1471 and 1491, each time urging people to practice archery instead. But the earliest golfing picture, a miniature in a book of hours once owned by Adelaide of Savoy, duchess of Burgundy, was made around the middle of the fifteenth century and predates the earliest of those Scottish texts.
Further miniatures follow from the Ghent-Bruges school, and a 1505 book of hours made for Philip the Handsome shows golfers swinging and putting. Scotland codified the game and gave it eighteen holes. It may not have invented it.
Which golf imagery works on a wall?
Course geometry and objects, not swings. A player mid-swing dates immediately and reads as stock photography. A green from above, a scorecard, a single ball in rough: those hold up.
- Aerial course views are wide. Give them a sideboard or console run.
- Green and sand are a hard palette to place. Warm neutrals and wood take them; gray rooms fight them.
- Scorecards and ephemera suit a study; landscape holes suit a larger room.
- Keep clubhouse memorabilia away from the art. One or the other reads as considered; both together reads as a pro shop.
The range sits in the golf wall art collection, with placement in choosing golf wall art and golf simulator room ideas. If you want the modern rules side of the game, how a Handicap Index works covers it.
Featured golf pieces
Frequently asked questions
Why does golf have 18 holes?
Because St Andrews judged its first four holes too short in 1764 and combined them into two, reducing a 22-hole round to 18. The number was a remainder, not a decision.
Is the whisky bottle story true?
No. There is no evidence that a round was set at 18 to match measures in a bottle of Scotch. The documented 1764 reason is that four holes were too short.
How many holes did St Andrews have before 1764?
Twelve, laid out in a line. Ten were played outward and then back again on the same greens, making a round of 22 holes.
What is a links course?
A course built on links land, meaning sandy coastal soil that drains well and carries short-bladed grass. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon hlinc, a ridge. Only about 17 percent of Scottish courses are true links.
When did 18 holes become an official rule?
The R&A wrote an 18-hole round into its rules in 1842, repeated in 1858 and 1875, though it was not laid down as a stipulated round in the Rules of Golf until 1950.
Did golf originate in Scotland?
It is disputed. Britannica describes Scottish invention as a popular fallacy, noting that the earliest golfing picture, a mid-fifteenth-century miniature from Burgundy, predates the earliest Scottish written references.
