Golf on the Sefton coast: Southport, Formby and Blundellsands

What the golf is like

This is the most concentrated run of links golf in our directory: six courses from Blundellsands to Southport, five of them marked exposed in our data, out on open dune ground with the Irish Sea close by. NCG's Top 100s for England has all five in it: Formby at 12th, Royal Birkdale at 3rd, Hillside at 22nd, West Lancashire at 25th and Southport and Ainsdale at 29th. The tourism site England's Golf Coast covers this run and beyond, listing 12 courses in total along the wider coast. Bootle, the sixth course in this hub, sits a little further inland and isn't marked exposed in our data.

Photo to followThe dune line separating Hillside and Royal Birkdale golf courses on the Sefton coast

Getting there

The A565 is the coast road, running from Liverpool through Formby and Ainsdale to Southport, with the M58 (from the M6 at Junction 26) the fastest route in from the east.

Merseyrail's Northern line, Southport branch, runs the length of this stretch. Freshfield station is about 0.2 miles from Formby Golf Club, Hall Road about 0.25 miles from West Lancashire, Ainsdale about 0.4 miles from Southport and Ainsdale, and Hillside station sits between Hillside and Royal Birkdale, about 0.2 and 0.3 miles from their clubhouses respectively. Bootle, set back from the coast, is about 1.7 miles from Bootle New Strand station. Trains run from Liverpool city centre roughly every 15 to 30 minutes through the day.

Liverpool John Lennon Airport is the nearest airport, 14 to 21 miles away depending which end of the coast you're at, straight-line and computed from each club's postcode.

When to go

All five exposed clubs here play into whatever wind is coming off the Irish Sea that day; check our guide to what wind speed is too windy for golf before you travel. Being links, the sandy ground generally copes with a wet spell better than clay-based parkland inland, though a genuinely sustained downpour can still close any course. Royal Birkdale's own visitor page states it plays visitors on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays only, so that one needs planning around in particular.

A few of the courses

Photo to followA fairway through the pines and dunes at Formby Golf Club, near Freshfield station

Royal Birkdale has hosted The Open 11 times, most recently the 154th in July 2026, and ranks 3rd in the NCG Top 100s for England. Formby, a short walk from Freshfield station, plays to a par of 72 and 6,815 yards from its white tees, and ranks 12th in the same list. Hillside, next door to Royal Birkdale, ranks 22nd, and Southport and Ainsdale, a little further south in Ainsdale, ranks 29th.

West Lancashire, in Blundellsands, is the southernmost of the exposed links here and ranks 25th nationally. Its address, Hall Road West, shares its name with Hall Road station next door. Bootle, the odd one out by kind, is a municipal course, council-run with no ranking in the NCG Top 100s and no membership needed to play.

For visitors travelling from further afield

Golfers with the time for more than one round often book several of these courses back to back, since they sit within a few miles of each other. Royal Birkdale is the one to plan around first, since it's the only club here with published fixed visitor days (Monday, Wednesday, Thursday). None of the six clubs shares a single booking system: Hillside, Formby and West Lancashire all book online through BRS Golf, Royal Birkdale through intelligentgolf, and Southport and Ainsdale by direct enquiry rather than an online booking page, so each round still needs sorting separately, club by club.

Not to be confused with

Golf Metric lists "Formby" and "Formby Hall" as two different things on purpose: Formby Golf Club is the NCG-ranked links club by Freshfield station, in our directory. Formby Hall Golf Resort & Spa, a separate parkland resort with its own 18-hole championship course and hotel a couple of miles away, isn't currently in our directory and isn't the same club, whatever a search engine might suggest by name alone.