Royal Liverpool Golf Club

Royal Liverpool Golf Club, known affectionately as ‘Hoylake’ by locals and members after the town it is situated in, will host another eagerly anticipated Open Championship in 2023. The list of Open winners at Royal Liverpool is not long, due to it being off the rota from 1967 to 2006, but it is very impressive.

Winners of the Claret Jug here include the greatest golfers from every generation – Harold Hilton (amateur), JH Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones’ (amateur) second leg of his 1930 Grand Slam, Peter Thomson, Roberto De Vincenzo, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy.

Hoylake is better known for its contributions to amateur golf and is the only venue to have produced two Open champions that were amateurs. Local golf hero and member of Royal Liverpool, John Ball, was the first amateur and first Englishman to hoist the trophy when he won the 1890 Open Championship at Prestwick Golf Club, he also won eight Amateur Championships.

The unofficial first Amateur Championship was held here in 1885, the event was so successful they petitioned the R&A to make it an annual competition. They meant at Royal Liverpool, but the R&A did listen, and the first official Amateur Championship was held on the Old Course in St Andrews the following year.

In 1902 it was the site of the first international match between England and Scotland, which would evolve into the popular Home International Matches.

The prototype of the Walker Cup also was initiated at Royal Liverpool, when after the Amateur Championship in 1921 they hosted a team of visitors from the United States against a team from Great Britain. The next year a formal competition was organized in the United States with the trophy donated by George Herbert Walker. In 2019, the US Squad defeated the GB&I team at Hoylake under Captain Nathaniel Crosby, who had played here as a young competitor in the 1983 Walker Cup.