Royal Birkdale Golf Links

Photo by flickr user Shayan (USA)

The Royal Birkdale Golf Club is one of the clubs on the Open Championship rotation, so it's got a a reputation for being one of the best links courses in the UK. It's reputation also warns it's a challenge: on windy days it's especially tricky because no two holes face the same direction so as well as using your physical technique you also have to use your head and work out wind speeds and angles and... Well, it's tricky.

The ground the course was built on features sand dunes and dip like valleys, which are utilised in the design - which was most recently revised in 1991 when the course was also relaid with grass. That was for the imminent Open Championship, but it's only required small 'fixes' in preparation for the more recent Opens, the last of which was held there in 2008.

The enormous bay windows of the club house are as famous with golfing widows as the course is with golfers, the view is really something.

You don't have to be a member to play here but you do have to make arrangements in advance with the Course Secretary so you can be given an official handicap etc.

Written by  World Reviewer Staff.

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