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Royal St George's Golf Club

Sandwich, Kent · Designed by Dr Laidlaw Purves (1887); later Frank Pennink & others · Est. 1887

Royal St George's at Sandwich is the most Scottish-feeling of the English links, and the only Open venue in the south of England. The story goes that its founder, the surgeon Dr Laidlaw Purves, spotted the great sweep of duneland from the tower of Sandwich's St Clement's church in the 1880s; the club was founded in 1887 and granted the royal title by Edward VII, and in 1894 it became the first course outside Scotland to host the Open Championship.

The golf is big, bold and elemental — huge rumpled dunes, blind shots, tumbling fairways and the deepest, most steeply revetted bunkers in championship golf. At 7,204 yards, par 70, with punitive rough and immaculate, wildly undulating greens, it is a course that demands imagination and rewards nerve; no two rounds are ever quite the same.

Fifteen Opens have been played here. The champions include Walter Hagen, Henry Cotton, Sandy Lyle — whose 1985 win ended a long British drought — Greg Norman with a record 267 in 1993, the unheralded Ben Curtis in 2003, Darren Clarke in 2011 and Collin Morikawa in 2021. Ian Fleming, a member, immortalised the links as “Royal St Mark’s” in the golf match in Goldfinger.

Holes worth knowing

14th — home to one of the deepest and most famous bunkers in championship golf, a vast revetted pit cut into the face of a towering dune; carrying it is one of the game's great tests of nerve.
215th–18th — a brutal, exposed closing stretch across the biggest dunes, where the wind off Pegwell Bay has broken many a promising round.

Highlights

The only Open venue in southern England (15 Opens)
The deepest revetted bunkers in championship golf
Ian Fleming's course in Goldfinger
Heart of the Kent “Sandwich triangle” of links

Good to know

→Royal St George's forms the Kent “Sandwich triangle” with Royal Cinque Ports (Deal) and Prince's next door — three championship links within a couple of miles for a perfect three-day trip.
→The bunkers are the deepest in championship golf and the ground the most rumpled: take your medicine from the sand, expect blind shots, and never trust a flat lie.
→Ian Fleming was a member and set the Bond–Goldfinger match here, thinly disguised as “Royal St Mark's”; the medieval town of Sandwich alongside is one of the best-preserved in England.
→Nearby, the RSPB reserve at Pegwell Bay, the white cliffs and castle at Dover, and the Roman fort at Richborough make fine non-golf outings.
→Visitors play mainly Tuesdays and Wednesdays in 3 or 4-balls; it is a couple of hours from the London airports and easy to combine with a few days in the capital.