Yes, travel insurance is worth carrying for a trip to St Andrews, and for many visitors the real reason has less to do with medical risk than with money already committed to a golf trip. This is the home of golf, and a surprising share of what can go wrong here is financial rather than medical - a cancelled tee time or a prepaid green fee at a course like the Old Course is a genuine loss if weather or illness derails your plans. Standard medical cover still matters too, even though St Andrews itself is a low-risk destination by most measures.
St Andrews' famously changeable coastal weather can close courses or delay a round with little warning, and prepaid green fees, especially for a bucket-list round on the Old Course, are rarely refundable outright. Confirm your policy covers prepaid golf bookings and weather-related cancellation specifically, since a standard trip-cancellation clause does not always extend to a golf itinerary booked separately from your travel, and check whether illness-related cancellation requires a doctor's note submitted within a set window.
St Andrews has a smaller community hospital for routine care, and for anything more involved, the nearest larger hospital city is Dundee, a short distance away across the Tay estuary; genuinely complex or specialist cases may mean a further transfer to Edinburgh. Confirm your policy covers transfer between Scottish hospitals rather than assuming the town's own facilities can handle every scenario.
Keep any clinic paperwork, course or club correspondence about a cancelled booking, and receipts for prepaid green fees or accommodation if your trip is disrupted. Check whether your existing health cover extends to the UK specifically before relying on it, since the answer depends on your country of residence, and confirm your policy's claims process for both a medical incident and a cancelled golf booking before you travel.