Royal Porthcawl Golf Club

Royal Porthcawl began in 1891, when a group of Cardiff businessmen met to found a golf club and engaged Charles Gibson, the professional at Westward Ho!, to lay out the first nine holes on the duneland at Rest Bay. A second nine followed in 1895, and Ramsay Hunter extended the links to a full eighteen in 1897; King Edward VII granted the royal title in 1909. From the beginning the ground gave the club its signature — a shelf of links where the Bristol Channel meets the Glamorgan coast, and where, uniquely among Britain's great courses, the sea is in view from every single hole.

There are no trees and no shelter. The opening three holes run right along the shore, the shingle beach in play off a pulled shot, before the course climbs onto higher duneland and turns for home into the prevailing wind. Harry Colt reworked the links from 1913 and is credited with eight of its holes — the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 14th, 15th and 18th — and it is the closing stretch that lingers: the 18th drops to an away-sloping green set right at the sea, one of the most memorable finishes in the British game. At barely 7,000 yards and par 72 it is not long, but in a Channel gale it is as searching a test as exists.

The honours board is the strongest in Wales. Royal Porthcawl has hosted the Amateur Championship six times, the Curtis Cup in 1964, the Walker Cup in 1995 — won by Great Britain & Ireland — and the Senior Open Championship in 2014, 2017 and 2023. Bernhard Langer won the 2014 Senior Open wire-to-wire here, finishing 18-under and thirteen shots clear of the field. Whenever the R&A discusses a first Open Championship on Welsh soil, Porthcawl is the name mentioned first.

For all its pedigree the club is welcoming and gloriously old-fashioned: a low white clubhouse above the beach, fast true greens, and links golf stripped back to its essentials. Weekday green fees traditionally include a Welsh breakfast or lunch in the clubhouse — a civilised touch before a bracing round.