Six Great Writers on Royal Liverpool

Royal Liverpool is 154 years old. One benefit of that longevity is that several generations of authors have had a chance to write about the course. Below we’ve collected observations, analyses, and opinions on the 2023 Open Championship venue from some of our favorite golf architecture writers.

Here are the sources of the writing, in order of publication:

• Horace Hutchinson, Famous Golf Links (1891)
• Henry Leach, “Famous British Courses: 2. Hoylake,” from The American Golfer, Vol. 1 (1909)
• Bernard Darwin, The Golf Courses of the British Isles (1910)
• Robert Hunter, The Links (1926)
• Patric Dickinson, A Round of Golf Courses (1950)
• Tom Doak, The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses: Volume 1 – Great Britain and Ireland (2014)

Did we miss any great pieces on Hoylake? Let us know in the comment section below.

First impressions

The links of Royal Liverpool Golf Club is reckoned by everybody to be one of the finest tests of golf in the world. It is depressing to find on seeing it for the first time that it is utterly flat and dreary to look at, and for all the infinite subtleties to be discovered it remains rather formidably unattractive. -Patric Dickinson

My first impressions were, I must confess, unfavorable. The course was neither pleasing to look upon nor did it give at first sight much promise of supplying either attractive or exacting golf. It is flat. There are no impressive hazards. The surroundings are dull and even ugly. The sea seemed remote and the construction gave more evidence of man’s handiwork than one expects to see on the links. The basis of the course was, however, real links-land, and the mildly undulating fairways, the hillocks and hollows, promised to yield some surprises in the play. -Robert Hunter

Hoylake is much flatter than most famous links, indeed a bit barren on first impression, and it was the paucity of natural hazards that caused the club to create a hazard of its own invention—small berms known locally as ‘cops’ that designated internal out of bounds. -Tom Doak

The remark that the golfer will be inclined to make on his first view of Hoylake Links will be uncomplimentary. It is so flat. It looks as if it were going to be uninteresting. But it is not so. It has corners of fields which stick out in unexpected and cunningly vexatious places; it has ‘cops,’ which is Northcountry English for banks; and it has ditches. Then on the [River] Dee-side of the course there are great sandhills almost rivalling the majesty of the Prestwick Himalayas, and the whole lengths and breadth of the course is the arena of a struggle for existence between the alien golfer and the native rabbit. -Horace Hutchinson

An illustration of Hoylake from Horace Hutchinson's 1891 book Famous Golf Links

On a first view [the links] are not imposing. All that appears is a vast expanse cut up into squares and strips by certain cops or banks, partly walled in by roads and houses, with a range of sandhill in the far distance. Yet this place of dull and rather mean appearance is one of the most interesting and difficult courses in the world, and preeminently one which is regarded with affection by all who know it well. -Bernard Darwin

Playing characteristics

Once on this Hoylake links, there is no means of avoiding prosecuting counsel’s questions. It is a golfing cross-examination which will reveal and work upon every flaw in your golfing technique. It is at Hoylake that all golfing dentists should be forced to take their holidays. Hoylake probes relentlessly, finds the soft spot, and reaches for the drill. -Dickinson

There are features at Hoylake which are not encountered anywhere else, or at least not with such strength. There are long sand-bottomed ditches, the corners of that enclosure, corners of hedges—one at all events, that a brute—and other things. These features for the most part put a high premium on placing the long shots, and the player who cannot do that with a tolerable amount of certainty will never get the full amount of satisfaction from Hoylake that his more successful colleagues can and do. -Henry Leach

Then, too, there is always a rich reward at Hoylake for the man who can play his approaches really straight and with a firm, sure touch. There are some courses where the greens are always helping us and the ball is always running to the hole. We may play a most indifferent iron shot on to the outskirts of the green, and behold! a kindly slope has intervened on our behalf, and the ball finishes within comfortable putting range. Hoylake is emphatically not one of those easy and enervating places; there the greens are always fighting against the player, and he must hold his shot straight on the pin from start to finish. If he does not, the chances are that the ball will take a vindictive leap, and his next shot will still come under the category of approaching. There is none of your smug smoothness and trimness about Hoylake; it is rather hard and bare and bumpy, and needs a man to conquer it. -Darwin

A 1909 map of Hoylake from The American Golfer

There is one boldly outstanding [characteristic of Hoylake:]…. its narrowness, which calls always for very straight play with driver and brassy, and furthermore this narrowness increases as you get nearer to the hole, so that the approaches are generally tight and the putting greens are well bunkered close in. -Leach

You have to play Hoylake with a good breeze off the sea in order to respect it, to fully appreciate its unusual merit, and finally to be humbled after it has taken your measure. -Hunter

Controlling one’s trajectory beats the bomb-and-gouge approach here. -Doak

Hoylake is also famous for its shrimps and prawns. Its potted shrimps are almost better even than its putting-greens. -Hutchinson

The first hole (championship third)

Let us look carefully at the first hole. It is doglegged to the right, round the right angle of two cops: it needs a very long and brave drive to carry the corner. There is plenty of room to the left, and an average stroke will reach the corner, but it is quite easy to go out of bounds. You are left then with a perfectly simple second to the green. But all along the right runs the cop, its mean lowness is an open insult, and along its inside edge is a trough of sand. It is unpardonable but horribly easy to put your second out of bounds, as well as your first. -Dickinson

The first hole is so good and difficult that it seems almost a pity that we are compelled to play it before we have got thoroughly into our stride. Whatever the wind, it is our duty to begin with a long, straight drive between the club-house railings on the left and a sandy ditch and cop on the right. At about the distance of a good drive from the tee the cop turns at a right angle to the right and we must follow the cop, skirting it as near as we dare. The wind cannot be either with or against us for both our first and second shots, and we shall have a fine opportunity of showing our skill in the use of it…. Altogether there are few finer holes to be found anywhere and it would always find a place in my eclectic eighteen holes. -Darwin

Present-day view from behind the championship third (members' first) green at Royal Liverpool (courtesy of the R&A via Getty)

Most of our theorists hold that the first hole on a course ought not to be too trying, but should rather encourage the player to make a good start and put him on good terms with himself. He has plenty of trouble in store on almost any course. How many candidates for championship honors have I seen almost heartbroken at the very beginning of things at this hole. I have seen an ex-champion, and a Hoylake one at that, take 8 to it in a round of the championship. Readers will perceive that it is a curious hole, is it one of the very best as a two-shotter? Mr. John Low says emphatically that it is. Some people hold otherwise. -Leach

At the very first hole one is taught not to treat Hoylake with contempt. It is without a doubt the most uninviting first hole on any first-rate course in Europe, but one has only to play that hole once to approach it ever afterward with profound respect. -Hunter

The lost, lamented “Dowie”

Next comes one of the finest short holes in the world, ‘The Dowie,’ which is not only very good, but really unique. There is a narrow triangular green, guarded on the right by some straggling rushes and on the left by an out-of-bounds field and a cop; there is likewise a pot bunker in front. To hit quite straight at this hole is the feat of a hero, for let the ball be ever so slightly pulled, and we shall infallibly be left playing our second shot from the tee. Nearly everyboydy slices at the Dowie out of pure fright, and is left with a tricky little running up shot on to the green. The perfect shot starts out of the right just to show that it has no intention of going out of bounds, then swings round with a delicious hook, truffles through the little rushy hollow, and home on the green; it is a shot to dream of, but alas! seldom to play. -Darwin

There is the seventh hole, a great short hole, ‘The Dowie.’ Another cop crawls sulkily along the left edge of the green, enticing the ball to lip over into outlawry. The green is beautifully modelled and guarded without bunkers, and the ideal shot is a draw just wide enough to turn in and die on to the right-hand side of the green—but a shade too much and out you go. -Dickinson

The finishing stretch

… surely the most exhausting finish to be found on any links in the world. -Darwin

There is the famous Hoylake finish; flat, long, grinding, and inexorable; to be feared and admired—rather like the finale of Sibelius’s Third Symphony: a long, slow winding-up, a steady accumulation and accretion. -Dickinson

From left to right: championship Nos. 3, 18, 1, 2; member Nos. 1, 16, 17, 18 (Sam Cooper)

They are not much to look at, those last five, but they are horribly good golf, and if you are only all square at the thirteenth with one of the Hoylake champions your chances of ultimate success are exceedingly small. -Darwin

Closing thoughts

Hoylake separates the true lovers of links golf from those who only sort of understand it. -Doak

Hoylake is Puritan, yes: a three-hour sermon in a gaunt building, all whitewashed walls and black-clad sinners, or a three-hours round this gloomy, marvellous links, there’s not much difference. It’s Hell-fire or humble self-surrender to a God who will not tolerate a frivolous stroke, or laughter on the greens. Is golf a game at all, or a form of self-denial, or masochism? -Dickinson

[Hoylake] needs to be known very well indeed to be appreciated properly, for in a large measure it is an acquired taste. You get a peculiar kind of golf on it that is not offered to you anywhere else that I know. Naturally all the men of the Hoylake school proclaim its merits with a loud voice, and a considerable proportion of them are disposed to suggest that it is the best course in existence, or rather, that it affords the best test of the game. -Leach

That the course is either interesting or difficult all will not agree, but those who disagree most loudly with the statement will, I venture to assert, usually be found to be the worst of players…. The critic should then further be asked his opinion of St. Andrews, and it will generally be found that he classes St. Andrews and Hoylake together as the two worst courses he has ever seen. He may forthwith be treated with silent contempt, and his opinions may be ignored. He has effectually written himself down an ass. -Darwin

A Harry Rountree watercolor of the member 12th / championship 14th tee nestled in the seaside dune ridge at Hoylake

On the whole, a flat links, where the ‘sure’ tells more than the ‘far’; yet not an uneventful links, for there is great variety…. Its rabbit-holes are not to be admired. They make bad golfing hazards; for they are indefinite. One ball among the rabbit-holes may lie teed, while another, landing quite close beside it, may be several yards underground, with a family of rabbits battening on it. No wild driver should come to Hoylake without a ferret trained to draw gutta percha. -Hutchinson

For the best golfers there are few really testing shots on even the most difficult of courses. When one watches the Titans at play, their tremendous drives often make their seconds absurdly easy. Holes of 440 yards are sometimes reduced to the drive-and-pitch variety, and their accuracy is often so machine-like that the game seems silly. But such golf is much more frequently seen inland than by the sea. Place these same Titans on links-land and what a difference when the wind blows! There only are championships in Britain held, and there only, after all, can the real champion be sifted out from the many fine golfers of the present day. The man who can play his shots in a gale and control them at the finish to some of the glassy seaside greens, richly deserves the title. -Hunter

Hoylake is a tough, epic links. Like one of those classics of literature which one is always being recommended to read—“You won’t really enjoy it, but you must read it, it is an experience you will never forget… and it is beautifully written.” -Dickinson