Richmond

Few courses in England can claim a backdrop quite like this one. Richmond Golf Club sits on the edge of Richmond Park, one of London's great royal deer parks, and the proximity to that sweeping, ancient landscape gives the course a character you simply don't find elsewhere in the capital. The park's herds of red and fallow deer are as much a part of the setting as the fairways themselves, and the mature oaks and chestnuts that frame the holes carry the quiet authority of centuries.

Founded in the 1890s, the club is among the older established layouts in the Surrey belt — a region that arguably contains the highest concentration of quality heathland and parkland golf anywhere in the world. The course plays to a par of 70, reflecting a design that rewards precision and course management over raw power.

This is members' golf at its most traditionally English: unhurried, well-maintained, and steeped in the kind of atmosphere that reminds you why the game took root so deeply in this corner of the country.