All You Need is Lancashire
The coastline around Liverpool is deservedly known as the Golf Coast. Three of England’s four British Open courses—Royal Lytham, Royal Birkdale and Royal Liverpool—call this region home. All of them are historic, offer beautiful scenery, and present a worthy challenge. And when you’re not golfing, Liverpool is a great city to explore.
What We Love About Lancashire
The Golf Coast offers options galore. Playing all three Open Rota clubs is an obvious, but fabulous, choice. But before that, you might want to start at Formby. The Ladies course affords an excellent opening round to get your irons working after your flight before taking on the longer track.
The area’s 18 courses are all within an hour’s drive, most much closer than that. But since many of them are along the rail line, we think taking the train to our rounds is a blast. Saturdays are members’ days at the clubs, making tee times hard to come by, so we love to take a day off golf and catch a football match at Anfield in Liverpool or at Old Trafford in Manchester.
Both Liverpool or the coastal town of Southport have good hotels and you can certainly stay in one for the whole week, though we prefer to spend a bit of time in both cities. We also include a night at the recently renovated Dormy House at Lytham and enjoy a formal dinner in the dining room. The Hard Day’s Night Hotel, in Liverpool’s Beatles Quarter, is excellent with just the right amount of kitsch. And be sure not to miss a Beatles tour with Jackie, our favourite Fab Four expert.
Favourite Courses
Royal Birkdale: Ranked #40 in the world, the fairest Rota course has played host to 10 Opens, most recently Jordan Spieth's remarkable win in 2017
Royal Liverpool (Hoylake): With no lighthouses, mountains or wild undulations, this is not most conventionally pretty course, but it ranks #65 and is a fierce challenge, requiring supreme shotmaking when the wind is up
Royal Lytham & St. Annes: This rugged links course, which ranks #61, features roughly 200 bunkers and while there are no views of the sea here, the wind and vegetation shout “seaside”
Formby: The main course surrounds the Ladies one and offers a variety of vistas—from pines to heather to dunes
Hillside: Located between Birkdale and Southport & Ainsdale, but with a different feel than either of them. Famous for its excellent back nine
Southport & Ainsdale: Next to Hillside, and four years older, this fine James Braid course hosted two consecutive European-based Ryder Cups in the 1930s
West Lancashire Golf Club: Every hole demands your full attention in a breeze and recent upgrades make the greens firmer and faster, but still playable
Wallasey: The home of the Stableford scoring system boasts lots of history in the clubhouse, including what may be the only signed portrait of Bobby Jones, who qualified here before winning The Open in 1930
What does your trip look like?
Every Travel Impresarios Golf trip receives a unique website.
To see an example, click here.