Scotland has been named the world's best golf destination in a prestigious award being held in the Middle Eastern City of Abu Dhabi.
The World Golf Awards, which is held annually, is in its ninth year and celebrates excellence in golf tourism with the winner selected by tour operators, golfing media, and fans from around the world.
Beyond winning the world's best golf destination award, Scotland was also named Europe's best location to play golf in.
This is the first time the home of golf has picked up both of these awards in the sport's prestigious prize-giving event.
READ MORE: St Andrews golf: Ardgowan Hotel, close to Old Course, sold to Wirefox by McLachlan family
READ MORE: 10 best places to play golf in Scotland according to Tripadvisor reviews
Scotland, which has more than 550 golf courses, hosted the 150th Open at St Andrews in Fife in July of this year.
The country also hosted The Genesis Scottish Open, The Senior Open Presented by Rolex, Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open, AIG Women’s Open, and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
In a statement, VisitScotland's chief executive said: “These awards are a fitting end to an extra special year for golf in Scotland and fantastic recognition for all the people who work so hard to grow and enhance our reputation as the Home of Golf.
“I’d like to extend our congratulations to everyone, as well as the wider tourism and events industries and suppliers.
“Every year, we welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors eager to play our great golf courses and relax in our accommodation after a day’s golf, enjoying local produce and visiting nearby attractions."
Dermot Synnott, director of global partnerships for the World Golf Awards added: “Scottish golf tourism is thriving, and Scotland is a bucket list destination for most golfers around the World.
“It offers a vast range of parkland and links options across all its regions, so the travelling golfer really is spoilt for choice.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here