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The second English links ever built (after Westward Ho! in northern Devon—1864,
Royal Liverpool Golf Club was founded in 1869. (It is often often simply called
"Hoylake" from its location by the community of Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula
south of Liverpool.) Although it has been nationally famous for inaugurating the British
Amateur Championship in 1885 and hosting the "Amateur" eighteen times, Royal
Liverpool is best known internationally as being included in the British Open course
rotation.
In 1893, Royal Liverpool was one of the 3
original English courses (with Royal Sandwich, and Royal St. George’s) to be added to
the British Open Championship rotation (along with Scotland’s St. Andrews and
Prestwick). The Open Championship has been played 10 times at Hoylake, first in 1897 when
Harold Hilton, a member of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, beat Scotland’s legendary
James Braid by one shot. Since then, the British Open has been played 9 times at Hoylake:
1902 (Herd), 1907 (Arnaud Massy), 1913 (J. H. Taylor), 1924 (Walter Hagen), 1930 (Bobby
Jones), 1936 (Alf Padgham), 1947 (Fred Daly), 1956 (Peter Thomson),
1967 (Roberto de Vicenzo), and, most recently, in
2006 (Tiger Woods). Of all the Open Championships played at Hoylake, Bobby
Jones’s victory in 1930 is the most memorable, for it was the great American
amateur’s third British Open championship, and it came as the second leg of his grand
slam of victories — all in one season
— in the then four majors of golf: the US
Open, US Amateur, British Amateur, and British Open tournaments
In 2006 the
British Open returned to
Royal Liverpool Golf Club after a 39-year hiatus. To upgrade Hoylake for the new realities
of golf technology and prepare the course for the huge TV audience the British Open
commands, the club made some significant alterations to the course. First it hired one of
the world’s hottest course architects, Donald Steel, to modernize (read: lengthen)
the course. Next, to accommodate television’s desire for a dramatic finish, holes 17
and 18 were changed to holes 1 and 2 for the Open Championship, pushing back the
course’s signature first hole to number 3 in the new order. The last hole for the
2006 Open was #16, a 558-yard par 5 that
finished into a green surrounded by an
amphitheater of galleries.Hoylake has hosted the British Amateur Championship 18 times, a Walker Cup tournament, and a Curtis Cup tournament. A traditional seaside links, Royal Liverpool is a flat out-and-back layout. From the championship (white) tees the course is quite long at over 7,200 yards. Visitors play from the yellow tees that play almost 1,000 yards shorter. Nevertheless, the course’s exposure to the west wind off the ocean can make Hoylake play much longer and hillier than it appears on paper. |
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LENGTH & PAR:
White
(Championship) tees: 7,218
yards, Par 72
Yellow
(visitors’) tees: 6,237
yards, Par 72, SSS 71
Red
(ladies’) tees: 5,853
yards, Par 74, SSS 75
GREENS FEES: £140/round (includes lunch)
FACILITIES:
• Clubhouse
• Caddies available (request in advance)
• Pull cart (trolley) rental
• Practice range
• Restaurant serving breakfast, lunch, tea
• Dinner available by reservation only
• Pro Shop
VISITORS INFORMATION:
Dress Code:
• On The Course:
Conventional golf wear is
required and
shirts should be tucked
in. Shorts should be tailored,
knee length and, for
gentlemen, worn with knee-high
long socks.
• In The Clubhouse:
Golf wear can be worn
throughout
the Club until 6PM but
shorts are not permitted
upstairs at any time.
Thereafter, and always on
Sundays, jacket and tie
(or equivalent dress for ladies)
are required upstairs.
There are restrictions on where
golf shoes, caps and
outer garments can be worn.
Visitors are
particularly required to dress appropriately
in the Dining Room.
Denim jeans, training shoes and
round neck T-shirts are
not permitted either on the
course or in the Club
House.
Handicaps:
Handicap certificate required
— Men: 21, Ladies: 32.
Course
Availability for Visitors:
•
Monday mornings course closed for
maintenance.
•
Thursday is Ladies’ Day; visitors
may play after 2:30PM.
•
Weekend play restricted to a single round after
2:30PM.
•
The Club may require 2-ball or 3-ball play.
TEE TIMES MANDATORY
RESERVATIONS: Tel: +44
(0)151 632 7772
E-mail:
bookings@royal-liverpool-golf.com
| PAYMENTS:
Reservations
must be confirmed within 14 days with a non-returnable deposit of £25 per player,
otherwise the booking may be cancelled. The balance of fees must be paid at least 30 days
before the date of play to confirm the reservation. Non-payment by the due date will
result in the reservation being cancelled. The Club will send no reminder. Fees may be
paid by cash, check, or credit card. Checks should be made payable to "Royal
Liverpool Golf Club".
NEAREST HOME AT FIRST LODGINGS: Near the town of Whitchurch on the Cheshire/Shropshire border 60 minutes south of the course. From Whitchurch drive north on the A41 to the M53 at Chester. Take the M53 to Exit 2, then drive 10 minutes on the A553 to Hoylake. OTHER NOTABLE COURSES IN THE REGION: Two other British Open courses are close neighbors to Royal Liverpool Golf Club: Royal Birkdale, in Southport, 30 minutes north of Liverpool, and Royal Lytham & St. Anne's, just south of Blackpool about 45 minutes north of Liverpool. Together the three royal linkses are the crown jewels of England’s Golf Coast: the Atlantic coast stretching from Chester north to the English Lake District. Numerous other courses of all challenge levels are scattered throughout western England. |
LOCATION:
The Links are on Meols Drive (A540) between
Hoylake and West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula, west of Birkenhead, approximately 10
minutes drive from Exit 2 of the M53 and about 50 minutes from Liverpool and Manchester
Airports. Hoylake railway station is just 600 yards away. HISTORY
OF THE COURSE: The
Liverpool Golf Club was founded in 1869. It became "Royal" in 1871
thanks to the patronage of Queen Victoria’s younger son, the Duke of
Connaught. The course was built on dunesland owned by the Liverpool Hunt
Club near the small town of Hoylake across the River Mersey estuary from
the large English seaport of Liverpool. The venerable Hoylake links is
second oldest of all English seaside courses, built just four years
after West Ho! on
Devonshire's north
coast. The original course architects were Robert Chambers and George
Morris, but their work has been revised and augmented several times in
the last 137 years.Horse racing continued on the golf course during Hoylake's first decade. The first and eighteenth holes, "Course" and "Stand", were named after racetrack landmarks. More important landmarks in the club's history occurred shortly after the racetrack disappeared. In 1885 the links hosted the first British Amateur Championship—an annual event that would be a Major tournament for many decades—and in 1902 Hoylake hosted the first match between and Scotland. In 1921, the tourney between Great Britain and the United States of America—now called The Walker Cub—debuted at Royal Liverpool. The club's great involvement in promoting amateur golf is—even more than its status as an Open course—its principal claim to fame. Indeed, the very rules of amateur golf were compiled at Hoylake. Three of golf's greatest amateurs have close associations with the club: the 19th century Open champions John Ball and Harold Hilton (both members at Royal Liverpool), and the greatest amateur player of all, Georgia's Bobby Jones, who won his third and final Open championship on the Hoylake course.
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THE
COURSE TODAY: Thirty-nine
years have passed since Roberto de Vicenzo won the last British Open
played at Royal Liverpool. In the interim, of course, equipment changes
and improved training methods have made most elite golfers longer,
straighter, and more accurate. Hoylake, with the considerable help of
course architect Donald Steel, has been lengthened and upgraded to take
on twenty-first century clubs, balls and athletes. Currently ranked at #
HOYLAKE
& THE ENVIRONMENT: An interesting
section of Royal Liverpool's web site devotes considerable space to the role the
club plays as a responsible steward of the important wetlands its golf course
shares with hundreds of thousands of migrating birds as well as many native
species of worms, snails, and plants. The club clearly takes its responsibility
seriously, but not too seriously. "At first sight," the club notes, "the
mudflats of the Dee Estuary look like a barren wasteland...in fact they are
among the most productive habitants on the planet, at least twice as productive
as agricultural land. In each square meter of mud it is possible to find 450,000
worms and 5,000 snails, a rich menu for the 100,000 waders and 30,000 wildfowl
that winter here. Our links also boast a unique feature—this is the only place
in England where McKay's Horsetail can be found. Don't bother looking...it's
somewhere in the rough betwixt the 9th and the 12. And frankly it's not very
pretty."
THE
REGION: England’s Golf Coast
offers a wealth of golf courses for golfer’s of all levels of skill and wealth.
But if the golf is great here it is not the principal claim-to-fame for this
diverse region of western England. For most Americans under the age of 65,
Liverpool & Merseyside are much better known for their great musical
contributions of the 1960’s, collectively known in the USA as the British
Invasion. Leading the charge, of course, were the Beatles, whose hometown of
Liverpool now courts American tourists with attractions including the Magical
Mystery Tour, Cavern Club, and The Beatles Story. Not far north of Liverpool is
the classic, quirky English seaside resort of Blackpool—known for its electric
excesses and unkind climate—eclectic enough to amuse and confuse Americans with
a glimpse of English masochistic eccentricity. South of Liverpool is the small
city of Chester, gateway to North Wales, and proud conserver of one of the great
walled medieval city centers still extant in Britain.|
Traveling to Britain to Play Golf? Let Home At First make your advance tee-times at Royal Birkdale and many other British golf courses as part of your pre-reserved independent fly/drive trip itinerary. There’s no extra charge for this service.
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