This course is in our GSPro library — pull it up in any bay and play it wall to wall.

"The Postage Stamp's tiny green ringed by deep pot bunkers (including 'The Coffin') punishes even well-struck shots; caddies help pick the safest miss. In GSPro it runs under the licensing alias 'DPC Royal noorT' ('Troon' backwards) — search that, not the real name."

Founded 1878 on the Ayrshire coast, grown from six holes into an Open rota giant: Charlie Hunter (a protégé of Old Tom Morris) shaped the first holes, Willie Fernie set the current routing in 1910, and James Braid added the fierce bunkering in 1922. Eleven Opens have been decided here, most recently 2024. Its fame rests on two holes Fernie created: the 123-yard 'Postage Stamp' 8th, the shortest hole in Open golf with a 2,635-square-foot green, and the 'Railway' 11th, gorse and out-of-bounds hard against the Glasgow-to-Troon line.

Open rota completists, anyone who wants to test their nerve on the Postage Stamp, and golfers who believe a course should have two personalities — out gentle, home ferocious.

The Postage Stamp 8th — 123 yards of pure terror, waves on the left, train on the right, five bunkers around a sliver of green (Gene Sarazen aced it aged 71). And the Railway 11th, a 490-yard par 4 into the wind with OB both sides, among the hardest holes on the rota.

The front nine downwind lulls you; the back nine into the wind through gorse is genuinely brutal. Beginners can survive the start but the inward half is championship golf with no apologies.

In GSPro — Royal Troon recreations are on the server, and the Postage Stamp is a perfect sim party hole: closest-to-the-pin contests on a green the size of a bay screen. The back nine with wind cranked up is one of the honest hard tests in the software. Queue it for any Open-themed night.

Private but takes visitors on set days (typically Mon/Tue/Thu) via advance booking, often as a Portland+Old combo ticket in the £300+ range. Handicap certificates required; book months out in Open years.