Similar to Merion before the US Open, if you play the Old Course in November through March, your caddie carries a carpet-remnant for you to use in the fairways. Actually its a fairway "mat" and you lift-and-place your ball on the little mat if you landed on the fairway to make your next stroke...
"WHAT? I traveled 4-thousand miles to play the Old Course off a driving-range mat??"
They do this to protect the fairways from the enormous traffic-strain of thousands of rounds during the Winter-months when the shorter fairway grass is basically dormant and doesn't regrow or heal. St. Andrews is as close to the North Pole (2200-miles) as Churchill, MB in Canada up on Hudson Bay -- so they don't get more than 6-hrs of daylight in the winter. That's almost as far north as Anchorage, Alaska -- and the American tourists still want to play golf there -- in the Winter.
