The history of Royal Liverpool
Royal Liverpool has played a huge role in the development of golf, whether it’s been through innovative championships to its production of golf’s early superstars. The pedigree of Hoylake is without question. With The Open returning to the Wirral for its 13th edition, we look at Royal Liverpool’s incredible and varied history.
The beginning ‘Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake’ was founded in 1869. Robert Chambers and George Morris laid out the original course – at that point just nine holes – and by 1871 it was 18, the same year it became Royal Liverpool.
Racing pedigree Truly multi-purpose, until 1876 the land is used as a golf course as well as a horse racing track, the legacy of which is witnessed today in the names of the 1st and 18th holes, Course and Stand. The Royal Hotel, next to what is now the 17th, was used as the clubhouse initially. Chambers’ son Jack was the first pro.
Pioneers of the game The club has been steeped in the elite amateur scene from the start, staging an informal Open Amateur ‘Grand Tournament’ in spring of 1885. A field of 44 leading players of the day gathers, with Allan Macfie beating the esteemed Horace Hutchinson 7&6 in the final. The club suggests to the Royal & Ancient Golf Club that a formal Amateur Championship is founded and one is duly staged the following year in St Andrews. In 1922 the 1885 championship is recognised as the first ‘Amateur’ and Macfie the first champion.
Superstar No.1 Hoylake soon had its own amateur superstar. Johnny Ball was born in 1861, the eldest son of John Ball, owner of the Royal Hotel, and won the first of a record eight Amateur Championships in 1889. The following year won his second Amateur on his home course and also became the first amateur to win The Open (and also the first Englishman, ending the Scots’ domination). Ball fought in the Boer War and after he was shot in the neck while rescuing one of his men, he refused to give his name to the press, whom he distrusted, and was therefore not honoured.
Superstar No.2 The club was established as a breeding ground for champions by the turn of the century. With Ball still in his prime, Harold Hilton – born a mile from the club in West Kirby – won The Open in 1892. He added a second Open in 1897, at his home club, and he and Ball are two of the three amateurs to become the Champion Golfer of the Year. He also won The Amateur four times, one of those triumphs was in 1911 when the chain-smoking Hilton also crossed the Atlantic and won the US Amateur and also casually found the time to become the first editor of the Golf Monthly magazine.
Innovation and history In 1902 Hoylake stages the first international match between England and Scotland while Sandy Herd, playing the exciting new Haskell ball (rubber wound round a core then coated rather than simply a solid piece of rubber), wins the second Open to be staged at the club. Scotsman Herd beat the legendary James Braid and Harry Vardon by a shot. Five years later The Open is back at Hoylake and French professional Arnaud Massy – who mastered the game as both a left hander and then a right-hander – becomes the first overseas champion. He names his daughter Margot Hoylake Massy.
The impregnable quadrilateral Hoylake unfailingly produces great champions, and notable history. After victories in Hoylake Opens for the estimable Englishman JH Taylor in 1913 and the charismatic Walter Hagen in 1924, the Open returned to amateur hands in 1930. And what hands.
Bobby Jones clinches the Claret Jug, the second leg of his Grand Slam - the Amateur and Open titles of both Great Britain and the United States. He retired soon after with no challenges left to strive for and later wrote to the club saying, “it was at Hoylake I played my first competitive round of golf in Britain and also my last”. His portrait hangs on the stairs in the clubhouse.
Birth of the Walker Cup In the same way as Hoylake sparked the idea for the Amateur Championship, so the club did so for the Walker Cup, the showpiece of the amateur game. In 1921, the club arranges a match between the finest amateurs on either side of the Atlantic immediately before The Amateur. The US win easily but the key takeaway is that the idea caught the imagination of USGA president George Herbert Walker – grandfather of former US President George HW Bush – and the following year the first Walker Cup is staged on the revered National Golf Links of America. Jones won his two matches but GB&I won 8-4.
Overseas champions Englishman Alf Padgham won the 1936 Open at Hoylake but Frenchman Arnaud Massy started a trend with his 1907 victory. In 1947 Fred Daly won the second post-war Open, becoming the first Irish champion. Then in 1956, Australian Peter Thomson completes his hat-trick of wins with a third consecutive triumph. Third that year was amiable Argentine Roberto de Vicenzo – he of the “what I stupid I am” after a scorecard error cost him the Masters – and he returned to the Wirral in 1967 to finally claim the trophy he had long wanted. “I want to win this tournament so bad. I lose my hair in England,” he told the BBC’s Harry Carpenter’s, removing his cap, “look at that!”
Strong women’s heritage The course has also been the stage for key ladies’ events, from 1896 to the present day. In 1896 the Ladies Amateur Championship was held at Hoylake, with Amy Pascoe ending Lady Margaret Scott’s domination. In 1992 youngster Caroline Hall, 18, seals a one-hole win over Vicki Goetze and means GB&I regain the Curtis Cup. Then in 2012, the Women’s British Open is staged for the first time with Jiyai Shin, winning by nine.
The Open returns Nearly four decades passed between Di Vicenzo’s win and the next Hoylake Open, in 2006 the club is rewarded with the perfect champion. Tiger Woods eschews his driver as he plots his way around the baked links to see off Sergio Garcia, clad in all-yellow, and claim his Open hat-trick. He shows rare emotion after holing the winning putt as it was his first major since his father died, and is comforted by Steve Williams. The attendance for the week is the second highest in Open history.
Rory roars The 2006 Open was a success, so just eight years to wait for the next. Rory McIlroy enjoys benign conditions to win his first Open and third major title with a two-shot victory over Garcia and Rickie Fowler. Hoylake becomes the fifth most-used Open venue after St Andrews, Prestwick, Muirfield and Royal St George’s.
Celebration time In 2019 the club celebrates its 150th anniversary and hosts the 47th Walker Cup. Alex Fitzpatrick is in the GB&I side as they lead 7-5 after day one, cheered on by more than 11,000 fans over the weekend but slip to defeat after a US singles fightback. Hoylake was also the host in 1983 when a US team containing Brad Faxon won.
Architectural timeline Since the days of Chambers and Morris, the feted Harry Colt, Donald Steel and Martin Hawtree made revisions before the biggest impact on the links by Martin Ebert in the past two years, inspired by The Open’s imminent return. Greens have been remodelled and new tees built but the most significant development has been the brand-new 15th hole, ‘Little Eye’. At just 134 yards off its very tips, this is one of the shortest holes in modern major championship golf – yet expect it to challenge the world’s most skilled players. The new, elevated green sits among the dunes with Hoylake’s best views of the Dee Estuary. There are acute run-offs on three sides for anyone not finding the middle of the target.
Unique Hoylake Little Eye will play as 17th in The Open, because Hoylake uniquely uses a different configuration for the championship compared to its standard layout, in order to accommodate the enormous infrastructure associated with the event. That also means the fearsome 1st – arguably the toughest start on Open-hosting courses – isn’t actually the 1st. Nevertheless, even as the 3rd it will focus the attention of even Rory and co because it unusually features internal out of bounds. A sharp dog leg to the right that plays around the practice ground, which morphs into the tented village during Open week, the best route in is from the right… close to the OB. Whichever way they choose to tackle it, whoever conquers Hoylake will be joining one of golf’s most illustrious lists of winners at one of its most iconic courses.