Even simple numbers can be misleading in golf.
Results from The Herald Scottish Golf Survey 2026 suggest the mean – or “average” – visitor green fee is more than £80, while the median – the middle value when all prices are lined up – is closer to £45. Those two figures tell very different stories about what golfers actually pay.
The mean is calculated by adding up all the green fees and dividing by the total number of clubs. With a handful of elite venues charging several hundred pounds per round, those elevated prices inflate the mean, making it look as if a typical game of golf in Scotland costs upwards of £80. That does not match the lived experience of many domestic golfers.
By contrast, the median is the price that sits bang in the middle of the distribution: half of listed green fees are below it, the other half are above. With the median at £45, this clearly underlines the emergence of a two-tier – or arguably three-tier – golf economy in Scotland.
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As with green fees, there is a gap between the mean and median price of an annual subscription, but proportionally the difference is far smaller.
While the divergence between the two measures of green fees is roughly 85%, the difference between the mean subscription fee of £775 and the median of £650 comes in at just around 20%. This shows a fundamental split in how golf clubs price their two core audiences.
Membership fees remain relatively stable, clustered around £650 to £800, while green fees are increasingly polarised between everyday clubs and high-end destinations. In effect, clubs are doing their best to keep a lid on the cost of membership while visiting golfers increasingly cross-subsidise the impact of rising operating costs.
On a regional basis, where mean and median diverge, Scottish golf is unequal. Where they align, it is stable – and where both are low, it is vulnerable.
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(Image: Damian Shields)