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— Ten Times an Open Championship Venue — |
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Royal Birkdale Golf Club BIRKDALE, SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND Photo courtesy theopen.com |
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VIEW FROM THE FIRST TEE at Royal Troon Old Course |
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Rated #35 in the
world outside the USA,
and #5 in England, |
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Royal Birkdale is rated #35 in the world on Golf Digest's List of Top Courses. Royal Birkdale shares the extensive dunes of northwestern England's Sefton Coast with five other golf courses and several nature reserves and recreation areas. The course takes its stewardship of this fragile habitat quite seriously. A hole-by-hole guide to the flora and fauna of Royal Birkdale makes for interesting reading, especially in light of the inherent conflict of maintaining an exclusive, irrigated golf course on land belonging to an ecosystem dependent upon the changeability of its composition due to tides, wind, sun and rain. Photos courtesy Royal Birkdale Golf Club |
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Royal Birkdale is one of three NW English coastal links courses to regularly host the British Open. Along with local linkses at nearby Royal Lytham & Saint Anne’s and Royal Liverpool (better known as HOYLAKE) the Blackpool-to-Liverpool coast will have hosted five of the last twelve Open Championships— 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2017—putting this thirty miles of coast lining the Irish Sea on a par with the three classic Open host courses similarly placed over thirty miles of Scotland’s North Sea coast: MUIRFIELD, ST. ANDREWS, and CARNOUSTIE (2005, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2015). |
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For the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of |
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Saint Andrews, the Open’s sanctioning body, to award this otherwise unremarked coastal region of Britain with such Open Championship frequency suggests the setting — and these three courses especially — offer the game something special. In the case of Royal Birkdale, currently ranked by GolfDigest.com as the 35th best course in the world, the special something is the Sefton Coast, almost 5,000 acres of dunesland, the largest such environment in the United Kingdom. |
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THE HISTORY OF ROYAL BIRKDALE GOLF CLUB 18TH GREEN & CLUBHOUSE — ROYAL BIRKDALE GOLF CLUB |
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The landmark clubhouse at Royal Birkdale, built
audaciously to show the golfing world the club's ambitions. |
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It wasn’t always this way at Royal Birkdale, of course. The club, originally |
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building a locally organized 9-hole course, first came together in |
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Arnold Palmer |
1889. Eight years on the club moved to a new 18-hole course spread among the dunes of the Birkdale Hills. Over the ensuing 110+ years, evolution has remained active at Royal Birkdale. Looking to upgrade to championship course standards the club hired five-time British Open champion J. H. Taylor and British course architecture firm Hawtree to redesign Birkdale. In 1935 as the new course design was underway, Birkdale built a grand new clubhouse in a modern, 1930s rectilinear style, a form that has been faithfully maintained despite several subsequent changes and additions. Birkdale’s unusual clubhouse has become the iconic image of the course, but tournament play has put the course on the map of world golf. Starting with the British Amateur Championship (at the time still a major tournament) in 1946, the revamped Birkdale Golf Club became the venue for numerous top-echelon golf tournaments. Once it was awarded “Royal” status — bestowed on the course by Queen Elizabeth II’s father King George VI in 1951 — Royal Birkdale caught the greatest prize in UK golf: joining the rotation of courses hosting the annual British Open Championship. The Open Championship has been played at Royal Birkdale in 1954 (winner: Peter Thomson), 1961 (Arnold Palmer), 1965 (Peter Thomson again), 1971 (Lee Trevino), 1976 (Johnny Miller), 1983 (Tom Watson), 1991 (Ian Baker-Finch), 1998 (Mark O’Meara), and most recently in 2008 (Padraig Harrington). The 10th scheduled Open Championship for Royal Birkdale |
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(& 146th Open overall) occurs July 16-23, 2017. |
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VISITING THE COURSE 5TH GREEN, 343 YARDS, PAR-4, #13 HANDICAP |
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ROYAL BIRKDALE GOLF CLUB |
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LENGTH & PAR:
GREENS FEES:
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FACILITIES:
VISITORS:
Welcomed every day. |
TEE TIMES:
RESERVATIONS:
• Or, let
HOME AT FIRST
pre-reserve your golf tee-times
at |
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ADDRESS & CONTACT
INFORMATION:
LOCATION:
Royal Birkdale
is within 150 minutes drive time or less from
DIRECTIONS TO SOUTHPORT & BIRKDALE: • FROM THE LAKE DISTRICT: take the M6 motorway south to Junction (Exit) 27, then east on the A5209, east on the B5242, the A570, and the B5243 into Birkdale.
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FROM
NORTH YORKSHIRE:
take the A59 west and south to the M6 at Preston,
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FROM
SHROPSHIRE & CHESHIRE:
take the M6 motorway north to Junction (Exit) 27, then east on the A5209,
east on the B5242, the A570, and the B5243 into
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FROM
NORTHWEST WALES:
take the A55 east Conwy to Chester, then the M56 NE
OTHER NEARBY GOLF CLUBS OF NOTE:
Traveling to Britain to Play Golf?
MORE RESOURCES: |
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THE COURSE & SOME NOTABLE HOLES |
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6TH HOLE — 488 YARDS,
PAR-5, #1 HANDICAP |
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The Hawtree/Taylor design created a course among the dunes, not atop them. The fairways and greens stretch along the valleys between the uplifted sand banks, following the natural contours of the rills. To some extent, the wind is kept less a major factor than at other true links courses, as long as golfers keep the ball low and play the fairways. But, errant shots will find major trouble in the scrub of willow and buckthorn that makes up the dense rough covering of the dunes. The championship course yardage is long and par relatively low for a true links at 7,173 yards, par-71. The dunes also serve as excellent perches for onlookers to watch the tournament progress in the fairways and greens below. There are four par-5s at Royal Birkdale (3 par-5s on the championship lay-out), and two of those — at holes 17 & 18 — can be birdie opportunities to finish the back nine. However, there are several long par-4s, that provide the great test at Royal Birkdale. Some key holes on the course are: |
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HOLE 9 — 410 yards, Par-4: Not one of the long par-4s at Royal Birkdale, but certainly among the trickiest. A blind tee shot must find a plateau in the narrow fairway before the dogleg right. A second shot requires hitting a rounded, elevated green protected in front by bunkers and in back and to the right by dense scrub.
The 9th hole leads to
an elevated green guarded |
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HOLE 12 — 181 yards, Par-3: In the absence of wind, this long par-3 from elevated tee to elevated green requires correct club selection and an accurate shot. Windy conditions greatly increase the odds of the first shot finding on of the four pot bunkers protecting the front of the green or of flying the green and reaching deep depressions or hillside scrub behind the green.
An elevated green
protected by dense rough and |
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HOLE 15 — 544 yards, Par-5: If a birdie is to be earned on this long, narrow hole, no fewer than 15 bunkers (13 lining the slender fairway) must be avoided. The challenge is daunting enough on a calm day, but magnified by any wind.
The fairways at Royal
Birkdale may be |
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HOLE 18— 472 yards, Par-4/5: A long par-4 from the championship tees is a reasonable par-5 for mortal golfers. Still, this last dance at Royal Birkdale requires avoiding four strategically placed fairway bunkers and negotiating the thinnest of aprons to the green. Pars are readily available here, but birdies usually require some risk-taking.
The 18th green can
reward |
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THE REGION 10TH GREEN, 408 YARDS, PAR-4, #14 HANDICAP |
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THE REGION: England’s Golf Coast offers a wealth of golf courses for golfers 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 northwestern England. Not far south of Southport (Birkdale) 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. A few miles further south is the port city of Liverpool. 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. South of Liverpool is the small city of Chester, gateway to North Wales, and proud conserver of one of the great walled medieval |
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city centers still extant in Britain. |
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TRAVELING TO THE
BRITISH ISLES TO PLAY GOLF? MORE RESOURCES:
• Home At First's
ENGLAND travel programs to:
• Home At First's
WALES travel programs to: |
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Want to learn
about other courses throughout the British Isles |
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