Walton Heath Golf Club — Old Course

Walton Heath is heathland golf at its grandest and most exposed. Founded in 1903, with the Old Course opening in May 1904 to a design by Herbert Fowler, it sits high on an open, wind-swept common south of London — and that exposure gives it an almost links-like character, quite unlike the sheltered, tree-lined Surrey heaths nearby. It opened with an exhibition between the great Triumvirate of Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor and James Braid, and Braid then served as the club's professional for an extraordinary forty-six years, until 1950.

Big, bold and heather-lined, the Old stretches to a championship 7,400-odd yards, par 72 (a friendlier 6,800 off the daily tees), defended above all by the wind, the heather and Fowler's deep, strategic bunkering. Its membership has read like a roll-call of British history: Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour and Andrew Bonar Law all belonged, and the future Edward VIII served as club captain in 1935.

The championship pedigree runs just as deep. Walton Heath hosted the inaugural News of the World Match Play in 1905 — for decades effectively Britain's professional match-play championship — and staged it many times thereafter. It stepped in to host the 1981 Ryder Cup, where one of the strongest American teams ever assembled ran out convincing winners, and more recently it has welcomed five European Opens and the 2023 AIG Women's Open. Visitors are made very welcome.