Links ClassicGreat Value

North Wales Golf Club

Llandudno, Conwy · Designed by Founded 1894 (laid out with Harold Hilton) · Est. 1894

North Wales Golf Club was founded in 1894 by Tancred Cummins, a Manchester cotton merchant who first saw the sandhills of Llandudno's West Shore at Christmas 1893. Cummins had the right connections: John Ball, the first Englishman to win the Open, visited that summer, and Harold Hilton — twice Open champion — helped lay out the links. It has been a genuine seaside links ever since, threaded between the railway and the sea.

At 6,254 yards and par 71 it is not long, but it is a proper links with real dunes and a real wind. The front nine runs out parallel to the railway line and the back nine returns along the coast, so the breeze changes the examination completely between the two. The Great Orme rises ahead and Anglesey and Puffin Island fill the seaward views; the club hosted the Welsh Team Championships in 1995.

Llandudno itself — the "Queen of the Welsh resorts," with its Victorian pier, sweeping promenade and Great Orme tramway — sits right alongside, making this one of the most enjoyable and best-value seaside golf bases in Wales.

Holes worth knowing

1The coastal back nine — the homeward holes run along the West Shore with the Great Orme rising ahead and Anglesey across the water.
2The front nine by the railway — flat, exposed and running the opposite way to the coastal back nine, so the wind flips the examination between the halves.

Highlights

Classic links laid out with Open champion Harold Hilton
Dunes between the railway and the sea
Views to the Great Orme, Anglesey and Puffin Island
One of the best-value links in North Wales

Good to know

→Llandudno, the "Queen of the Welsh resorts," is right here — Victorian pier, the sweeping promenade and the Great Orme tramway (Britain's only cable-hauled street tramway) make it a great non-golf base.
→The front nine hugs the railway and the back nine the sea, so the wind swaps the course's character between the halves — a downwind nine and an upwind one.
→Lewis Carroll connections abound: Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, holidayed here, and there is an Alice trail through the town.
→The Great Orme itself — a limestone headland with a country park, ancient copper mines and clifftop views — is worth a morning; Conwy Castle is ten minutes away.
→Pair it with Conwy next door and Anglesey's Bull Bay and Holyhead for a compact, superb-value North Wales links run.