Royal Birkdale

What it is

Royal Birkdale is a links course (built on sandy ground by the sea) in Southport, Merseyside, run by a club founded in 1889. It hosted the 154th Open in July 2026, its 11th time staging golf's oldest major, and sits eleventh in the NCG Top 100s rankings for Great Britain and Ireland, third in NCG's England-only list, and sixth in Golf Monthly's UK & Ireland Top 100, where it's rated the leading course in England.

How the course plays

Royal Birkdale's own visitor scorecard, read hole by hole on the club's site, gives a yellow tee of par 72 and 6,381 yards. For The Open, the course is set up differently: the white, championship tee plays to par 70 and 7,156 yards, because two of the par 5s on the visitor card, the 6th and 18th, are played as par 4s in competition. Unusually for a links course, Hawtree and J.H. Taylor's 1922 remodelling routed holes through the valleys between the dunes rather than over them, which is part of why the course has a reputation as one of the fairer Open venues: you can see the fairway from the tee more often than at some neighbouring links. Royal Birkdale does not publish a course rating or slope figure on its own site, so neither is given here.

History and a few facts

Nine members founded the club on 30 July 1889, and the first course, nine holes at Shaw Hills, opened that October. The club moved to its present site in the Birkdale Hills in 1894, and George Lowe, then professional at Royal Lytham & St Annes, laid out a full 18 holes there by 1897. In 1922, Southport Corporation, which had acquired the land, brought in the architects Hawtree and J.H. Taylor to remodel the course; Taylor himself had won The Open five times. The Art Deco clubhouse, designed by the local architect George E. Tonge after he won a competition for the job, was built in 1935. The club was granted its Royal title in 1951.

Royal Birkdale has hosted The Open 11 times since its first in 1954, along with two Ryder Cups and six Women's Opens, among other championships. In the 1954 Open, the Australian Peter Thomson won the first of his five titles here. In 1961, Arnold Palmer won by a single shot after a recovery shot from a bush on what is now the 16th hole; the club's own history page says the shot was thought so good that a plaque was put up to mark it, and still stands there. The 1969 Ryder Cup, played at Royal Birkdale, is remembered for Jack Nicklaus conceding Tony Jacklin's final putt on the 18th green so the match was halved rather than decided on a miss, one of the more well-known gestures in the event's history.

The 154th Open, played 16 to 19 July 2026, drew more than 300,000 spectators across the week, per the club's own count, and introduced a new Last-Chance Qualifier on the Monday of Championship week for the final spot in the field. New Zealand's Ryan Fox won it: four birdies in his last six holes, an unlucky bogey at the par-3 15th, and a birdie putt from just inside 12 feet on the 72nd hole for a closing 68 and a 10 under par total, one shot clear of Cameron Young, with Sam Burns third. It was Fox's first major title, at age 39, and only the third time a golfer from New Zealand has won The Open.

Playing it as a visitor

Royal Birkdale takes visitors on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; the club's own visitor page does not publish a handicap limit. In 2026, the green fee is £450 in March and April, then £495 from May to October; Wednesdays from May to September are sold only as the "Birkdale Open Experience", a £565pp package with a meet and greet, a gift pack, a photo with a replica Claret Jug, 18 holes and a two-course meal. The course is closed to visitors in January, February, November and December, and again from 22 June to 26 July 2026 for the Open itself. In 2027, fees are £450 in April and £495 from May to October, with Wednesdays sold as a similar £565pp package.

Book online, by phone on +44 1704 552020, or by emailing secretary@royalbirkdale.com; the office is open 09:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday. Full payment is needed for groups of 8 or fewer, or a 50% non-refundable deposit for larger groups, with full payment due 60 days before play. A caddie costs £80 a bag plus tip, or £100 to £140 for a forecaddie depending on group size, paid in cash. The dress code calls for a collared shirt tucked in, golf shoes with dimpled or textured soles, and no jeans, tracksuits or trainers.

Getting there

Southport and Birkdale sit off the A565 coast road, with the M58, joined from the M6 at Junction 26, the main motorway route in from the east. Hillside station, on Merseyrail's Southport line, is about 0.3 miles from the clubhouse, a 5-minute walk, with regular trains from Liverpool. Liverpool John Lennon Airport is the nearest, about 21 miles away in a straight line; Manchester Airport, a bigger international hub, is about 36 miles away.

Where to stay

None of these hotels are on site, and Golf Metric has not stayed in any of them; each is listed with its own website and its straight-line distance from the clubhouse, computed from the postcode. The Vincent Hotel and the Royal Clifton Hotel are both in central Southport, about 2 miles away. Formby Hall Golf Resort & Spa, a golf resort in its own right, is about 2.8 miles away.

When to go

The club's visitor season runs March or April to October, with the course closed to visitors over winter and again for several weeks around the Open in years it's held there. Green fees are lower early in the season (March and April) than from May onward. As an exposed links on the Sefton coast, expect wind off the Irish Sea; the club's own site does not publish specific weather figures.