Principal and Interest Vol.9
Hello folks and welcome to another iteration of Principal and Interest! Another small gap between posts, and because of that we have a lot to discuss! Let’s get into it…
Principal
7 months into the year and the market is still slowly but surely chugging along. Although the total number of sales is still down, there is plenty of activity. Specific to myself, I’ve seen the sale of properties that have been on the market for quite a while, as well as some very quick sales. New buyers have emerged and have been able to secure exactly what they were looking for in short succession. It is still a buyer’s market with record levels of inventory to choose from, so people can afford to be more selective in some previously busy price points. Rates have held more than some people would like with inflation creeping up again, but not everyone is being dissuaded. With many things up in the air currently on the global scale which I won’t get into, I don’t foresee a significant uptick in activity from the current numbers.
Interest
As I briefly previewed in my last post, my brother and I had the tremendous luck of winning the ballot to play The Old Course at St. Andrew’s in Scotland. Were we planning on going to Scotland for a golf trip before we won? Absolutely not. Did we immediately build a trip around it once we won? Absolutely we did! Chances to play the Old Course don’t come that often in a person’s life, and we weren’t about to pass up ours.
We had been to Scotland in 2022 under similar circumstances. We won tickets to a practice round of the 150th Open Championship at, you guessed it, the Old Course at St. Andrew’s. After playing some incredible golf courses, we capped off our trip watching the world’s best get ready for a major at the historic venue, and during our day at the Old Course, it became obvious why this golf course is consistently voted as one of the top golf courses in the world. It also became obvious that I needed to somehow get on to play it.
As some of you may know, getting a tee time on the Old is not as straightforward as many think. You can book a tee time through travel companies as part of a wider tour for an outrageous amount of money, or you can do what we did; throw your name in the ballot for blocks of tee times throughout the season and cross your fingers. And when we received the email last October we were surprised by the good news. We had won a 2-ball on the New Course (new in this case is relative, built in the 1890’s) followed by what every golfer dreams of, a 7am GMT tee time at the Old. So with a trip planned around that (shoutout to my brother for planning it), we set out in late May on our next Scottish voyage.
After landing in Glasgow and picking up a rental car, we made the short trip to Edinburgh to see the sites. Would highly recommend, if you’re into history at all, this place has something interesting to see around every corner. From there we drove up to the Highlands, past Inverness (also worth checking out), to a small hotel above a pub in Dornoch. The next day we kicked off the golf on our trip with 36 holes at what may also be the best golf course in the world, Royal Dornoch. We had already played this course on our last trip but made the almost 9-hour trip drive just to get out there again. Removed from the world, it really is a different kind of experience than any other golf course I’ve played.
From there, we headed south again to the East Lothian region and stopped to play the West Course at North Berwick Golf Links. Another top course, this golf course was the most unique experience I’ve ever had playing golf. With hundred-year-old walls to hit over and Tony Hawk halfpipes in the middle of greens, every hole was weird and amazing in its own way. For me, how much I liked this course was the surprise of the trip. Did I play my best round there by far? Yes, so maybe I’m a little biased.
Staying in Dundee for a couple nights, an amazing city all in its own, we couldn’t help but drive down to St. Andrew’s a day early just to check out the town and get a feel for the course. As you may know, the course begins and ends directly in town with tons of people, from golfers to students to residents, hanging around the 18th green to see how people finish up their rounds. We did the same thing, to which I can confirm it may be the best place to just hangout in the world.
The next day kicked off our first round at St. Andrew’s, playing the New Course. An extremely solid and enjoyable course also designed by Old Tom Morris, this was the perfect way to get acclimated to St. Andrew’s golf and prepare for the big day ahead.
So, on our final day in Scotland, bright and early in the morning, we tee’d off on the 129-yard-wide fairway of the 1st hole at the Old Course. If the fairway were any narrower I don’t think I’d have hit it given the first tee jitters. But I did manage to hit the fairway and subsequent green without winding up in the famous burn (shoutout Tiger), and from there went on to put together a decent round. Seeing all the famous holes where so much golf history had been made was truly surreal, and experiencing that with my equally as golf-obsessed brother will be a memory we both have forever.
If you ever get the chance to play golf in Scotland, you must take it. Between the amazing settings these courses are on, the fantastic people you meet, and the golf courses themselves, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better golf destination in the world. I’m not sure where the next golf trip will take me, but I’m sure it’s going to be very tough to beat this one!