St Andrews Annual Lottery

The Annual Lottery is an online application to receive tee times for play on the Old Course for the upcoming travel season, in this case for play in 2024. An alternative name for the Annual Lottery is Private Advance Tee Times and it is commonly referred to as the annual tee time lottery for Old Course tee times.

In the five years leading up to the pandemic about 34% of our clients were successful. This process was cancelled for 2021 and 2022 tee times due to Covid. For play in 2023, 21.79% of our clients were successful. We attribute this drop to the increase in demand due to 2020 and 2021 groups having to reschedule to 2022 and 2023 and the spike in demand that always occurs the year after St Andrews hosts The Open. The hope is that odds jump back up to 1 in 3 in 2024 as demand normalizes.

Old Course tee times obtained through the Annual Lottery are always paired with a second St. Andrews course — the New Course, the Castle Course, the Eden Course, the Strathtyrum or the Jubilee Course. You can select the second course you wish to play, however, depending on availability and course closures you are not always guaranteed to get the course you select. Luckily, all options make for a great day of golf!

St Andrews will announce exact dates soon, and we’ll update the below.

The application will open on August 23, 2023 and will close on September 6, 2023 at 6 p.m. CST.

Once the application window has opened, we will provide you detailed instructions by email on how to submit your application.

The application is submitted online directly through St. Andrews’ website by you (St Andrews prohibits us from doing it for you). You will need to create an account, and then fill out the application. Once you hit submit on the application, you will receive an email with a confirmation that your application was received. 

The application must be submitted any time during the day the process opens and the day it closes. There is no advantage to submitting your the application on the first day versus the final day since it’s not based on a first-come, first-served basis. We recommend you do not wait until the last day in case you have technical issues.

No, you may only submit one application for high season (mid-April through mid-October). St. Andrews checks for names submitted on more than one application and will disqualify those applications. You can, however, submit an application for both the high and shoulder seasons if you wish.

The results will be emailed directly to you sometime in mid-to-late October.

You will receive an email directly from St. Andrews that will announce your Old Course tee time. You will then need to pay St. Andrews directly for the entire group’s green fees by October 31st. If you do not pay by the deadline, your tee times will be canceled and allocated to someone else.

As soon as you have received your tee times, please forward the email from St Andrews to us. Hopefully, your tee time coincides nicely with the other courses already booked. If not, we will do our best to rearrange other courses around your Old Course tee time. Most of the time we are able to rearrange things to accommodate an Old Course tee time and sometimes we are not. We are not able to guarantee this. Worst case scenario is that an Old Course tee time conflicts with a course that we aren’t able to move to another day due to availability. You may have to substitute that course with another course. Some courses require a non-refundable deposits or the full, non-refundable green fee to be paid long before the results of the St Andrews annual application are known. If one of these courses cannot be moved to accommodate the Old Course tee times, you face losing deposits or green fees if you elect to take the offer Old Course tee time. Keep in mind that you can always elect not to take the Old Course tee time that was offered via the annual lottery process if it conflicts with another round on your itinerary. We will recommend that you list a certain set of dates on the application to maximize the chances of an Old Course tee time fitting with other times. However, you can increase your odds of success in getting a tee time, if you add dates in April. We can usually move all tee times from your original dates to April if you are successful.

Once everything has been confirmed, we will follow up with a Summary of Reservations, and your final payment will be due within 14 days of receipt of this document. The green fees for the Old Course will be removed from your trip price to us, as you will be paying St. Andrews directly for those green fees.

If unsuccessful, you’re not alone!

As we highlight in the material we provide all clients, the odds of success have historically been 25-34%. The majority of applicants are not successful. Please refer to www.pioneergolf.com/old for more information on the odds of getting an Old Course tee time via all methods.

If you have purchased/reserved one of our “guaranteed” tee times on the Old Course for a premium:

We will then move forward with the guaranteed Old Course tee time that we were holding for you at the premium discussed in your proposal. We will send over a Summary of Reservations once everything is secured, and your final payment will be due within 14 days of receipt of that document.

If you have not reserved/paid for one of our “guaranteed” tee times:

We now move to Step 2 of the “3 Step Process” described in your proposal in hopes of securing an Old Course tee time – the Daily Ballot. We will arrange your trip around your preferred week of travel (most arrangements will already be in place), and set everything up to maximize your chances in the Daily Ballot. We will send over a Summary of Reservations once everything is secured, and your final payment will be due within 14 days of receipt of that document. You can find more details on the “3 Step Process” in the link provided in your proposal or by clicking here.

Each application will contain the following information:

• Lead Golfer Information (the person submitting the application):
  • Name
  • Home address
  • Phone number
  • Email address

• Participant Information (all others in the group other than the Lead Golfer):
  • Name
  • Email address
  • Handicap (or estimation)
  • Home Club (or course played most often)

• Application Dates:
  • These are the dates in which you are able to play the Old Course. You are able to enter up to three date ranges, and each range can be as small as one day and as large as two weeks. The more flexible you can be with your travel dates, the higher the odds are that you are successful in the application. Closer to the application window opening, Pioneer Golf will advise you on this.

St. Andrews requires that one member of the group be designated as the “Lead Golfer”. The Lead Golfer is responsible for submitting the application. In addition, these following should be kept in mind:

• The Lead Golfer must be physically present at the time of play. Other members of the group may be replaced leading up to the date of play, but the Lead Golfer name cannot be changed. Therefore, it makes sense to pick the person least likely to drop out of the trip as your Lead Golfer.
• The Lead Golfer must be the one to submit the application to St. Andrews. St. Andrews doesn’t want any third parties submitting many applications and then reselling the tee times, so it must be done by someone in the group.
• If successful in the getting a tee time through this process, the Lead Golfer is responsible for paying the St. Andrews green fees for the entire group. This payment will be made on the payments page on St. Andrews’ website. We will then deduct this amount from your balance to us.

Note that the “Lead Golfer” of the St Andrews appliaction does not need to be Pioneer Golf’s primary contact for your trip.

IMPORTANT: If you do not feel comfortable with the above responsibilities or if there is a possibility that you may need to unexpectedly cancel your participation in the trip, please let us know as soon as possible and provide the name of the best person in your group to be the Lead Golfer of the application. We will then work directly with that individual and copy you on all correspondence to keep you informed.

Once the application has opened, we will send our recommended dates to the Lead Golfer. These recommendations will be based on your intended travel plans, as well as include advice on the additional two windows of dates that you will be able to apply for.

The dates that we will provide you are merely our recommendation. If you have to limit the dates you apply for due to date conflicts within your group you can certainly limit the date range that you will be applying for.

Each application can only include a maximum of 8 golfers. Should you have more than 8 golfers in your group, you will need to submit multiple applications (but not duplicates). We will advise on the best strategy for this prior to the application.

Yes, you are allowed to change the golfer names on the application if successful, but the Lead Golfer name must remain the same. St. Andrews will allow 1-2 name changes at no additional cost, but any further changes will result in fees. Name changes must be handled directly between you and St Andrews.