Royal Liverpool

Few courses in world golf carry the weight of history that Royal Liverpool does. The club was founded in 1869, making it one of England's oldest, and the links at Hoylake has hosted The Open Championship more times than almost anywhere else — including Tiger Woods' famous 2006 victory, Rory McIlroy's dominant 2014 performance, and, after a lengthy absence, a long-awaited return in 2023 won by Brian Harman. The layout was substantially reworked by architect Martin Ebert ahead of that return, restoring wilder, more natural linksland character to a course that had grown overly manicured in the intervening decades.

Hoylake sits on the Wirral Peninsula, across the Mersey from Liverpool, where the land flattens into broad, windswept turf bordering the Dee Estuary. The terrain is classically low-lying links — deceptive in its apparent simplicity, brutal when the wind turns. The famous internal out-of-bounds that threads through several holes creates strategic problems found almost nowhere else in championship golf.

This is not a course you merely play. You reckon with it.