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Pyle & Kenfig Golf Club

Kenfig, Bridgend · Designed by Harry Colt (1926); postwar dune holes by Philip Mackenzie Ross · Est. 1922

Pyle & Kenfig — "P&K" to everyone who plays it — was formed in 1919 on the Waun-y-Mer common near Porthcawl. A nine-hole course opened in 1922, was extended to eighteen by 1925, and in 1926 the great architect Harry Colt reworked it, laying the foundation of the course played today. It looks out over Rest Bay, the Bristol Channel and, inland, the Welsh mountains.

The modern character owes as much to the Second World War. Large parts of the links were requisitioned by the army, and afterwards the club moved seawards into the enormous dunes of Kenfig — ground the architect Philip Mackenzie Ross described as "a golfer's paradise." The result is a course of two halves: a gentler, more inland front nine, and a spectacular inward stretch that plunges into big duneland from the 11th onwards.

At around 6,600 yards and par 71, laid out unusually in two returning loops of nine, P&K is a proper wind-swept links that sits within Kenfig National Nature Reserve — one of the largest active dune systems in Europe, with a medieval town buried somewhere beneath the sand.

Holes worth knowing

1The back nine through the dunes — from the 11th the course plunges into towering duneland that Philip Mackenzie Ross called "a golfer's paradise"; its finest and most dramatic stretch.
2The turn for home — where the flatter, more inland front nine gives way to the sandhills, the character of the round changes completely; brace for the wind and the blind lines.

Highlights

Harry Colt links (1926) on the Kenfig dunes
Dramatic back nine through towering duneland
Within Kenfig National Nature Reserve
Minutes from Royal Porthcawl and Southerndown

Good to know

→The course sits within Kenfig National Nature Reserve, one of the largest active dune systems in Europe; beneath the sand lies the buried medieval town of Kenfig, swallowed by the dunes in the Middle Ages.
→It is laid out in two returning loops of nine, so you pass the clubhouse at the turn — a handy refuel before the course plunges into the big dunes on the back nine.
→The front nine is the gentler half and the inward stretch the drama, so save something in the tank; keep the driver in play where the wind funnels through the sandhills.
→Nearby Kenfig Pool and the reserve are a haven for orchids and birdlife, while Porthcawl's beaches and the Coney Beach funfair are a short drive for the family.
→It is minutes from Royal Porthcawl and Southerndown — three very different links within a few miles make an ideal South Wales base off the M4.