All You Need to Know About Royal Liverpool

Also known as Hoylake, the Royal Liverpool Golf Club will host the Open Championship in 2023.

The Royal Liverpool Golf Club links at Hoylake can be beautiful, uplifting, challenging, and even daunting when the wind really blows and the summer rough is deep. The course was created to be a demanding test of golf and remains so, and lies at the very heart of the history and development of the game in Great Britain.

Royal Liverpool is the oldest of all the English seaside Clubs with the exception of Westward Ho! in Devon, which was established just a few years earlier. Despite its at first glance flat and benign appearance, Hoylake makes the trickiest demands of a player’s shot selection, distance control and accuracy.

The Club celebrated its 150th birthday in 2019, a year which also saw the Walker Cup return to Hoylake, having made its last appearance in 1983. The Match was a wonderful addition to the celebrations of Royal Liverpool’s proud history and important role in the development of the amateur game.

But where did it all begin? Back in 1869, the first golf at Royal Liverpool was played, meaning it is England's second oldest golf club. However, it would only have the royal title after Queen Victoria bestowed it in 1871.

It might also sound surprising that golf wasn’t the first sport played on the links at Hoylake. From 1846 to 1876, the course was actually used for racing horses. This means that in the first 7 years, golfers shared the course with horses and jockeys with hoof prints still present!

In 1895, the first recognized Amateur Championship was hosted at Royal Liverpool, which was won by A.F. Mackie. This is also where Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur ever, in 1931, won the Open to finish the 2nd leg of his famous Grand Slam.

Generally, the Open and Amateur Championship was held at Royal Liverpool for many years.

Among the biggest tournaments in golf, the Masters Tournament is the most prestigious. Sports bettors would want to do research and compare odds when Masters betting. Find masters 2023 odds at The Sports Geek now! You can also check out some of the best Masters betting sites at The Sports Geek.

John Ball became the first Englishman amateur to win the Open in 1890 at Prestwick and his 8 other amateur championships. Three of his championships were from Hoylake in 1890, 1894, and 1910, a record that would never be beaten.

Hoylake is the only course using a different setup of holes in the tournament. The R&A adjusted the layout in 2006 so that it began at the 17th and ended at the par-5 16th, with the 1st hole for the members being 3rd at The Open. Generally, this was done to accommodate a grandstand around the last hole.

Royal Liverpool only lets a few visitors play at the course. To make things easier, let Halcyon Golf Travel organize your golf trip to Royal Liverpool  and other Open Championship venues, along with other great courses on England’s North West coastline.