Why does a golf course have 18 holes?
What most people think: A popular story claims golf has 18 holes because a bottle of Scotch holds 18 shots, one per hole.
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Just tell me the answer
Golf has 18 holes largely by historical accident. In 1764 St Andrews merged its first four short holes into two, turning its 22-hole round into 18, and that format gradually spread until it became standard.
Ask around the clubhouse why golf has 18 holes and someone will tell you, with total confidence, that it is about whisky. A bottle of Scotch, one shot per hole, round over when the bottle is empty. It is a cracking story. It is also nonsense.
The short answer
The 18-hole round comes from St Andrews in 1764, when golfers combined the first four short holes into two. That turned the round from 22 holes into 18. Other courses gradually copied St Andrews, and 18 eventually became the standard. There was no grand plan.
The real story
Early golf courses had wildly different numbers of holes. Leith Links had five holes in 1744. Musselburgh had seven, then eight in 1832 and nine by 1870. Prestwick opened in 1851 with 12 holes. Montrose at one point had 25. There was no correct number.
St Andrews was laid out in a line along the shore. Golfers played out to the far end and back again, using most holes twice. That made a round of 22 holes. In 1764, the first four holes were merged into two, and the round shrank to 18.
Here is the twist: St Andrews still did not have 18 separate holes. It had ten, with eight of them played twice. The famous double greens, which allow two holes to share one green, were created in the mid-1850s. A newspaper report of the 1857 spring meeting described the new set-up with different coloured flags for holes going out and coming in.
Even then, 18 did not take over quickly. Because St Andrews was so influential, and because the Open Championship was rotated around Prestwick, St Andrews and Musselburgh from 1872, the 18-hole model gained prestige. But as late as 1919, about half of British courses still had only nine holes. The 18-hole round did not become a stipulated round in the official Rules of Golf until 1950.
Why people get it wrong
The whisky story is irresistible. It is Scottish, it is funny, and it gives a neat reason for an odd number. Snopes collected a version circulating by email in 2002, complete with a specific date and a club member proposing the one-shot-per-hole rule.
The true answer is less satisfying, because it is basically “that is how one famous course happened to be laid out”. Humans prefer a story with a reason over a story with an accident. But plenty of sporting rules are like this: local habits from one influential place that everyone else gradually copied.
As the Scottish Golf History site puts it, the 18-hole format is at least partly an accident of history.
“It wasn’t whisky. It was a bit of 1764 real estate tidying. Less fun, I know. Pour yourself one anyway.”
Sources
Fact-checked 31 Oct 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we'll fix it in public.
