The AIG Women’s British Open is now set to follow Woburn Golf Club with back to back regal courses with Royal Troon added to the Championship roster for 2020 and Royal Porthcawl confirmed for 2021. It seems therefore, that that we are set for some quality golf on iconic courses now that The R&A has taken over the women's home Championship.
The course the best in the world will take on this week will arguably be a stiffer test to that which faced Max Faulkner when he won the Open when it was last hosted by Royal Portrush way back in 1951. It will be a slightly tougher test than when a sixteen year old Rory McIlroy took it apart when shooting 61.
The Open is less than a week away and so what better than a fine bit of Golf Porn from the fantastic links at Royal Portrush. 15th Hole, Par 4, 426 yards
Royal Mougins Golf Resort is celebrating a fantastic hat-trick after being named as ‘France’s Best Golf Hotel’ at the annual World Golf Awards for the third year in a row.
Two of Scotland’s leading links courses will host a prestigious Pro-Am tournament next year in honour of Donald Ross, one of golf’s most acclaimed architects.
Here’s a great piece from our good friends over at Leadingcourses.com on the top 10 Royal courses in the UK and Ireland. Enjoy!
Visitors to Provence are now able to enjoy a lot more golf for their euro after Golf International Pont Royal signed up to the Provence Golf Pass, which offers savings of up to 30 per cent of tee-times in the region.
Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club in Richmond, south-west London, now has a waiting list of golfers under the age of 30 wishing to join as Associate Members for the first time in the club’s long history having reached its capacity of 120 Associate Members.
Scotland’s summer of golf continues next week when the spotlight turns to Royal Dornoch which hosts the Boys Home Internationals.
Already regarded among the premier golf venues in France, Royal Mougins Golf Resort has taken its golfing experience to new heights after implementing a comprehensive upgrade of the bunkers and irrigation system on its award-winning championship course.
If you are looking for something a bit different on the golf holiday front this year, we have discovered this amazing house in Deal which you can rent, which is right on the doorstep of Royal Cinque Ports, Princes and Royal St Georges.
A world-renowned golf club is supporting a pioneering project that will help prevent part of its course succumbing to coastal erosion by rebuilding natural defences.
International golfers drawn to Royal Dornoch’s famous links have helped provide a £20,000 cash boost to a number of the club’s neighbours.
The final part of a series of major improvements to historic Royal Dornoch Golf Club’s Championship Course has got underway.
For only the third time ever, Golf Digest have released their World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses rankings, and at Number One it is again Royal County Down.
Royal Dornoch's commitment to its community and natural environment has earned it a coveted global sustainability accolade.
There may be an age difference of 86 years, but a long-standing golfing friendship is set to become even closer.
Jordan Spieth has presented Royal Birkdale with the three iron that won him the 2017 open.
The R&A has announced that 235,000 spectators attended this year’s The Open at Royal Birkdale, making it officially the largest crowd for an Open staged outside of St Andrews.
The golfing history books have just been rewritten at Royal Birkdale as Branden Grace shot a sensational 62 at The Open Championship to break the record for the lowest round at a Major Championship.
The historic Royal Dornoch Golf Club is ensuring its illustrious past is not forgotten by future generations.
Royal Dornoch Golf Club has completed a number of course changes in a drive for continuous improvement, and has been recently named as one of the Top 10 courses in Scotland.
A 12–foot alligator and an 8–foot alligator battle it out on the 18th hole of Panthers Run at Ocean Ridge Plantation. This one gets ugly!
Royal Norwich Golf Club has completed the sale of its land to developer Persimmon for £17m, and with it goes a little bit of golf history.
Royal Dornoch has pitched in to help tackle the scourge of dog fouling in its community, and to prevent you from having any untoward lies.
The R&A has announced that the 2020 Open Championship will be staged at Royal St George's, the scene of Darren Clarke's victory in 2011.
The internationally–renowned Royal Dornoch Golf Club is continuing a drive to help its neighbours by seeking new community projects to support.
One of the world’s oldest golf courses has been damaged by vandals who deliberately tore up one of the greens in a car. Utter cretins we say!
Golfers at Royal Dornach are being given spiritual advice by a Chaplain to Her Madge the Queen. Tampering with the Golf Gods is a dangerous game as we all know, so we have offered our own golf scriptures into the bargain...
The Ricoh Women’s British Open will take place at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club for a fifth time in 2018.
A crofter is fighting a £2million legal battle with Royal Dornoch over grazing rights.
Royal Troon may be hosting the 145h Open Championship, but it is by no means all that the South Ayrshire area has to offer for the golfer. We’ve had a look at what we think are the Top 5 links courses to play once you’ve taken on Royal Troon.
The big day has arrived for the members of Royal Troon. The special meeting that was announced two weeks ago in the light of the appalling vote at Muirfield will go ahead tonight. And we are praying for a resounding YES.
Do you want to play Royal Dornoch in a gale? We'll get our hats now!
A Texan, living in Florida, who swings it like John Daly. Say hello to your latest Swingin' Siren, Kirsten Royal.
Here's a fantastic shot of the 17th at Royal Dornoch taken on Tuesday by Getty Image's famed snapper David Cannon.
Thirty amateur players will contest a nine-hole event at Royal Troon on the eve of this year's Open Championship as part of efforts to boost participation in the sport.
Royal Troon Golf Club is set to remain men-only by the time it hosts this year’s Open Championship, despite efforts by The R&A to make the game more open and appealing to women. But has The R&A found a way of avoiding the media flak?
The Royal Norwich Golf Club has taken a major step forwards to making the sport more inclusive as they have appointed women to their four key roles. I don't know why anyone should be surprised in the wider world, but this is still golf.
You Little Beauty: Royal Ashdown Forest.... We want to play with the Common People.
This year Royal Dornoch Golf Club is celebrating 400 years of golf being played in the town and it is also 125 years since Brora Golf Course was founded. Here’s how they are celebrating together.
Congratulations to Royal County Down, which has just won a prestidgeous award for being the best course in the world.
One of our favourite links courses, Royal Portrush is set to return to the Open Rota later today. The R&A are set to name it as the course for the 2019 Open Championship, for the first time since Max Faulkner won there in 1951.
Aaron Moon, a former Royal Marine commando who lost a leg while serving in Afghanistan, now a golfing pro hoping to become the first amputee to play on the European Tour, is joining S&G Response in their One Million Yards golfing challenge, raising money for Street Support.
Golfers with a taste for the finer things in life can enjoy the many delights of the French Riviera when they stay at the exclusive Royal Mougins Golf Resort this spring.
Golf International Pont Royal has been nominated for the title of France's best golf course, in the 2018 World Golf Awards.
‘The flames of the clubhouse fire at Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club in 2001 consumed not only the members’ lockers, golf clubs and dozens of prized trophies and memorabilia, but also the traditional golf club way of life.’Now its tranformation has been captured in new book.
Spain’s five-star La Manga Club is celebrating its 45th anniversary in style after joining a select group of courses in Spain to have been granted royal status by the Spanish royal household, the ‘Casa Real – Royal House’.
Golfers have awarded The Montgomerie Maxx Royal with the title of Best Golf Club of Turkey in 2017, with an average rating of 8,47.
Royal Troon members have voted "overwhelmingly" at a special meeting to allow women to join the club. Hoorah! Welcome to the 20th century. Which the rest of us left behind 16 years ago...
Royal Norwich Golf Club’s sale of its course so that 1,000 properties can be built on it is set to go ahead as planning permission has now been granted.
Royal Troon will host a special general meeting on July 1 to consider whether to change its policy, which currently prohibits women from joining. The vote will take place just two weeks before The Open.
The Scottish government has refused planning permission for a controversial plan to build an 18-hole championship golf course in the Highlands of Scotland. The plan had been to build a championship golf course at Coul Links, Embo, near Dornoch.
Take one bike, one set of clubs, 14 different Open venues and one complete nutter and you have the ‘The Great British Open Challenge’. London-based PGA professional, Luke Willett, he with a famous golfing namesake, is to pedal his way between all the Open venues playing 18 holes at each and cycling with his clubs on his back!
It’s Manic Monday, so here is a very quick round up of all the results and stories from the weekend!
In near perfect conditions at Royal Liverpool, team USA showed their class in turning an overnight deficit of two points into a resounding victory by a score of 15½ to 10½. Having clinched the morning foursomes by 2½ to 1½, the American crushed the home side in the singles 8-2.
We very much like the prize being offered to the winning professional at this year’s Highland Golf Links Pro Am. As well as a cheque for a few bob the winner will receive a bottle of Tomatin 50-year-old single malt, which has been bottled exclusively for the tournament and is valued at more than £10,000!
Matt Fitzpatrick’s little brother, Alex, led the way for team Great Britain and Ireland at Royal Liverpool yesterday. Following a foursomes win in the morning, with partner Conor Purcell, Fitzpatrick took out world number one amateur Cole Hammer (great name!) in the top afternoon singles game to help The GB&I team to a 7-5 lead after day one.
Is it just us or can you not get excited about the Walker Cup? The amateur version of the Ryder Cup takes place this weekend over the famous Royal Liverpool Golf Club links at Hoylake. The two teams of 10 players will compete over the two days of foursomes and singles matches first to 13½ points winning.
Brooks Koepka had just teed off in the final round of the Open. We then heard ‘on the tee, JB Holmes from the USA’, the camera zoomed in on the man sitting in third place at Royal Portrush, then nothing. The guy looked confused as he suddenly wasn’t sure about something. Was it the wind had shifted? Had he changed his mind at to which club to take? Or perhaps he’d left the cooker on back at the house? Whatever it was he’d been standing on that tee for a good few minutes waiting for his tee time and he clearly was not ready.
Ireland’s Shane Lowry produced what he called "one of the most incredible days of my life" shooting an eight-under-par 63 that gives him a four-shot lead going into the final day of the Open at Royal Portrush! Englishman Tommy Fleetwood is the closest rival on 12 under after a 66 with JB Holmes third on 10 under. World number one Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose sit one further back but there are tough weather conditions forecast for the final day.
They needed it to be tough out there if they were going to challenge Shane Lowry but in the end, it was too tough and the conditions actually played in to the hands of the big man. For a man who grew up playing links golf up and down Ireland he was always going to be one of best equipped if the really high winds came.
The fairy tale has slowly unwound. Local boy, Darren Clarke, who led the field off on Thursday in the 148th Open Championship, took seven at the last to miss the cut. Rory McIlroy, who famously shot 61 around Royal Portrush at the age of 16, shot 65, equalling best score of the day, but agonisingly missed the cut by one. And our man, Gmac, held firm just making it through on the cut line, nine back from the leader.
Lee Westwood backed up a first day 68 with an impressive 67 and is currently tied in 3rd position with Tommy Fleetwood, just one shot off the overnight lead. Based on his recent form this is somewhat unexpected. What has changed you might ask? Well he’s brought Helen Storey, his girlfriend, in as his looper and, despite her not knowing much about golf, it just might provide the fairy tale story for one of the finest golfers never to win a major.
It’s etiquette right? You hit the ball in the direction of another person on a golf course, you shout ‘fore’. It instilled in you from almost your first shot on a golf course, be you ten year’s old or eighty. However, it seems for some professionals that once they have reached the lofty heights of the tour this unwritten rule no longer applies to them.
A front nine of such resplendent grace, your heart could stop and you would not notice... In the week the Open comes to Royal Portrush GolfPunk recalls its splendid neighbour Portstewart Golf Club - You Little Beauty
There were a number of rulings made by the R&A officials on day three of the Open but none was more interesting as that for Lee Westwood. And hats off to the 46 year-old Englishman who showed pure class and honesty in dealing with the situation.
J. B. Holmes leads the Open after a fine 66 on day one but all the talk was about Tiger and Rory. Once again when the spotlight of expectation was on him McIlroy failed to deliver and Tiger, well Tiger just looked tired.
As Brooks Koepka quietly tiptoes his way up the leaderboard at the Open at Royal Portrush we take a look at the club he is using to boom those drives out there on this famous links course.
Why is the golf now only on Sky TV in the UK with the BBC set to produce, if last year is anything to go by, a set of very ordinary highlights programmes? Who is to blame - Sky, the BBC, the politicians, the R&A or perhaps even Brexit?
Hughie's is the 416 yards, par 4 first hole on the Royal Portrush course. There is out of bounds on both sides of the hole with most golfers most concerned with that on the right. However, as there are bunkers on the right and left of the fairway at 262 yards and 291 yards respectively, most pros will go with an iron.
Every golfer loves a drop zone, except for the ones where you’ve just plonked it into the middle of that lake or alligator infested swamp! The pros in particular like it when there find themselves in or around a grandstand and they simply walk to a nicely mown little patch close by. Fast forward to Royal Portrush and the venue for the 2019 Open Championship.
Who will win the Open? Vote now for your pick of the Top 20, as per the bookies, or do you think it will be more of an outsider who takes the Claret Jug on the shores of Northern Ireland?
Darren Clarke will hit the opening tee shot at The 148th Open, while fellow local favourite Rory McIlroy is paired with US Open champion Gary Woodland for the opening two rounds at Royal Portrush, which we cannot wait to see!
Each year the winner of The Open receives the famous claret jug which he must return before the following year’s event. But what is the history behind this iconic trophy?
GolfPunk legend John Daly has had his request to use a buggy at this year’s Open declined by the R&A Championship committee. The big man suffers with degenerative arthritis in his right knee and was recently allowed a buggy at the US PGA Championship.
The Open is coming back to Northern Ireland after a break of 68 years. When Max Faulkner, one of the most flamboyant golfers of his generation, won the Open Championship in 1951 at Royal Portrush it would be 18 years until a Brit, Tony Jacklin in 1969, was to do so again.
What do you mean it's your first time? Well, let us hold your hand and walk you through the basics...
Three-time cancer survivor Nick Edmund has revealed plans to undertake two more marathon golf-walks during 2019 – just weeks after completing his second epic walk carrying a set of golf clubs on his back, this time around Scotland.
Renowned for delivering glitz and glamour on a widespread scale, there are few places in the world that can rival the French Riviera, and golfers can experience all this and more when staying at the exclusive Royal Mougins Golf Resort over the coming months.
Off the back of significant growth at its Cape Town outlet, Clubs to Hire - the leading golf club rental company - is to expand its South Africa presence by offering its service at Johannesburg airport.
A prestigious golf tournament at three of Scotland’s leading links courses has left an economic and charitable legacy to the Highlands.
Former British Amateur champion Romain Langasque emerged victorious in the Challenge Tour's inaugural Hopps Open de Provence, at Golf International Pont Royal, after a rollercoaster of a final round.
There has been unprecedented demand for tickets and hospitality from fans wanting to attend The 148th Open at Royal Portrush from 14-21 July 2019. They have now completely sold out of Weekly, Weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Championship Day Tickets.
Annabel Dimmock is your fast car loving, Wentworth playing, Swingin' Siren. Here she is... on the road...
We’ve been asking for nominations for the best five courses never to host The Open Championship, and these beauties rose to the top.
A prestigious Pro-Am tournament over three of Scotland’s finest links courses has sold out four months before it tees off.
New flights connecting Inverness to Norway this week could further increase visits from Scandinavian golfers who are coming to the Highlands in record numbers.
Ernie Els, Andrew ‘Beef’ Johnston and stars of the LET were on hand for an historic weekend at Saudi Arabia’s first championship golfing destination.
You might have to live and work in London, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make a quick escape to get your sticks out. Here are five of our favourite courses that are all within the M25.
Check out our Top 6 customised golf carts. They may cost you a small fortune to buy one, but you'll be the coolest person on the fairway.
There were more visits by US consumers to Scotland in the first nine months of 2017 than in the whole of 2016 according to new research, indicating continued growth from the US market and underlining its importance to Scotland’s visitor economy.
GolfPunk goes in search of sandy beaches, glorious golf courses and feisty rum...
Not what I wanted to hear. The fact is our Beech Craft B24R single engine, four-seater plane (furnished I might add with Connolly Hide leather and Wilton carpets), is battling through a 29-knot wind.
Norfolk is where mosquitos come for spring training, undergoing a grueling program of physical exercise and studying The Mozzie’s Guide To A Human’s Sensitive Areas.
Additional air connections to the Highlands of Scotland have helped tee up record breaking visitor numbers to one of the country’s best-known golf courses.
The planning application for the new Coul Links golf course has now finally been lodged. So what’s been occurring? And what are the outstanding issues?
Real Madrid and Wales International Gareth Bale completes the first hole of his astonishing home golf course.
Yorkshire born Dr Alister MacKenzie is renowned for designing Augusta, but he was also responsible for some other masterpieces. Here are four of our favourites, which just about anyone can play, and one that is virtually impossible to get on.
