I am a frequent solo player and I have some suggestions on this. First off, you do need to be prepared to play with strangers as sometimes it is just unavoidable. As the others said, it's really not bad, and I have played rounds with a lot of interesting people and learned a lot this way. It can be intimidating at first, but even the really good players hit bad shots and as long as you are keeping pace people don't care much about your ability.
That being said, I prefer to play alone sometimes and here are some tips to doing it.
1) hopefully you have a few course options in a smallish area. Being flexible about where you play will help. When your first choice course is too busy it's nice to drive on to another nearby option.
2) You need these courses to have online tee time booking. You are not actually going to be booking tee times for one(a sure fire way to get paired up with others incidentally). Searching the available online tee times on the day you want to play will reveal when the course is booked heavily and when its open. Search as if you are booking a foursome (otherwise sometimes the online systems are designed to autamatically pair you with others.) If you notice that there are several tee times in a row available to you at a certain time of day, then that is the time to show up. Weekdays mid day are great times. The old folks will always have the earliest times jam packed, and you want to get out before the after work/school rush in the afternoon. Weekends are tricky but i have found late'ish afternoon on Sundays to be good in my area. The key is that you search ON the day you are going to play, the closer to the time you want to play the better. Some booking systems wont show you anything sooner than an hour away. Obviously none of this works if there is still time for the course to get booked.
3)If there are no times booked between 1:10 and 1:50 for example, you want to try to get on toward the later part of that. The reason is that even if you are not a fast player, you as a single will be much faster than an average group. You don't want to run into the mobs ahead of you too quickly and end up having to play through, which now puts a group directly behind you.
If at any point you do get a group behind you, KEEP PACE, and be willing to be absorbed into the group ahead of you or behind you if there is room. Never make a group wait unless you are waiting and nothing can be done about it. If it is clear behind you but you finding yourself waiting on the group ahead, you need to slow down. Drop extra balls, practice your putts, and enjoy your practice time.
