The Royal St Georges Golf Club

Few venues in golf carry the weight of history that Royal St George's does. Founded in 1887, it was the first English club to host The Open Championship, and it has done so more times than almost any other course on the rota — most recently in 2021, when Collin Morikawa claimed the Claret Jug. The links was also the setting for one of the game's most celebrated shots, Greg Norman's 2-iron from 247 yards at the 18th in 1993, and the backdrop for Ian Fleming's fictional golf match between James Bond and Auric Goldfinger.

Laid out across the duneland of Sandwich Bay on the Kent coast, the course is famously capricious. Humps, hollows, and blind shots abound; the wind rarely takes a day off; and the rough swallows anything wayward without apology. There is nothing manicured or predictable about it — it rewards improvisation and local knowledge over raw power.

Royal St George's is a pilgrimage for serious golfers, and membership remains intensely exclusive. To play it is to stand inside a century and a half of Open Championship lore.