The UK is blessed with many of the finest inland and links courses for golfers. The inland courses provide visitors with the most tranquil and popular parkland and heathland locations while the links courses are where the beautiful game evolved and are a national treasure.
Listed below are few of the best golf courses in the UK that are popular all year round.
Royal County Down – Championship
Founded: 1889
Location: Newcastle, County Down
This Championship course at the Royal County Down is one of the best courses in Northern Ireland. Royal County Down provides a roller coaster-esque trek through the dunes. They do this by throwing in some gloriously natural bunkering and testing your skills with blind tests. It is one of the most photographed courses in the world as the course provides you with unique terrain, rough-edged bunkering and a stunning Mountain of Mourne backdrop. It’s easy to see why many golfers have had top golfing experiences here.
Sunningdale – Old Course
Founded: 1901
Location: Sunningdale, Berkshire
The old course is an excellent choice for many, on account of its history and tradition as well as the great championships that have been hosted there. The terrain has a range of elevation changes via hills, heather and broom. The 10th hole demonstrates the range of the terrain where it stretches down and up to the fabled halfway hut where you’ll spot the sausage sandwich, which will definitely make you smile. It’s one of the top inland golf courses in the UK (maybe even Europe) and is one of the most popular Heathland courses in the world.
St Andrews – Old Course
Founded: 1552
Location: St Andrews, Fife
One of best golf courses located in Scotland is St Andrews Old Course – the home of golf. It is a very popular location where many keen golfers from all over the world come to play from dawn to dusk all year round. The course is rich in heritage and history and that gives an unforgettably experience for the visitors as you start and return to the Auld Grey Toon from the opening and closing holes. Nearly every famous golfer has competed over the historic stretch of links land and it’s the number one spot for the true lovers of the sport and the best golf holidays Scotland has to offer.
Woodhall Spa – Hotchkin
Founded: 1905
Location: Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire
The Woodhall Spa course is highly challenging for all golfers as it’s a location where the bunkers are unforgiving. The course provides a high number of bunkers on the greenside and fairway and so you really need to be on the top of your game to avoid the sand. The heathland course has been recently upgraded and all golfers will need to focus more on their strategy and positioning along with ball-striking and length off the tee.
Royal St. George’s
Founded: 1887
Location: Sandwich, Kent
The Royal St. George’s course is one of the best links courses in England and it was the first one outside of Scotland to host The Open all the way back in 1894. The course is unique as no two holes are the same throughout the open space of the rumpled fairways. Golfers can play their rounds around the biggest dunes along the Kent coast. The well-known holes include the 6th and 14th where its green set is located very close to Out of Bounds.
St George’s Hill
Founded: 1911
Location: Weybridge, Surrey
This challenging heathland course offers a variety of holes and an abundance of memorable moments, like the short par-3 eighth hole on the Red nine that plays across a valley with heavily bunkered terrain on its far bank. The famous Surrey heathland golf club has a unique red-brick clubhouse that looks over the opening and closing holes of both Red and Blue nines. This course provides variety, drama and challenge for all levels of golfers.
Royal Liverpool
Founded: 1869
Location: Hoylake, Wirral
This was a course where Tiger Woods won in the Claret Jug 2006 and Rory McIlroy won the same competition here in 2014. Royal Liverpool is famous for its challenging and historic course that will be hosting the 13th Open Championship in 2023. From the clubhouse of Hoylake Golf Club, you can see several flat holes playing around what used to be the racecourse but now it is just for practice. The course at Hoylake has some unique features and really sparks to life in the middle when it moves closer to Dee Estuary for a more dramatic links golf experience.
Ganton
Founded: 1897
Location: Vale of Pickering, Yorkshire
This course hosted the 1974 Ruder Cup when the USA beat Team GB in a hard fought competition. This course is often described as an inland links, and while this description will sit uneasily with some people, it still embodies many of the characteristics of a links. The winds that blow over this course places great emphasis on accuracy, because there are many bunkers just like those in Woodhall Spa! Ganton has many stunning holes such as the 6th and the par-3 10th where the fair green is covered with bunkers but is concaved to gather balls in.