Course Details
Hillside Golf Club in Southport, United Kingdom
First time used in 2019; Has hosted many Open Qualifiers and Amateur Events
6,953 yards – Par 72 – Bent/Fescue Greens??
Fairways and Rough: Bent/Fescue?
Architect: Built in 1911; Fred Hawtree Renovation (1967)
Location: Merseyside Coast (half mile from the Irish Sea coast), Central UK, West Coast
Water Hazards: A few brooks
Style: Exposed, Links
Field Scoring: No previous Euro Tour events
Important Interview Quotes
TOMMY FLEETWOOD: I want to play well and I want to do really well in the event. At the end of the day, I’m not here just to host. I’m loving doing that and I’m really proud that I’ve got my face to a tournament but, still, I want to prepare as well as I can and hopefully put on a good show.
I get an extra week in my own bed and I’m not ever going to complain about that,” he said. Who knows? I normally have a week off before the Majors and I haven’t won one yet, either. Maybe playing the British Masters the week before might be the turning point.-2019
Course Website: A true championship links, overhauled in the 1960’s by renowned architect Fred Hawtree, Hillside is regarded as probably the finest links golf course not to have hosted the Open Championship. The club has a track record of staging some of the highest profile professional and amateur tournaments including the 1982 PGA Championship (When Tony Jacklin defeated Bernhard Langer in a Play Off) and twice the Amateur and Ladies Amateur Championships. A regular Final Qualifying venue for the Open, Hillside has recently been chosen by the European Tour to host the 2019 British Masters.
The layout of the course is balanced in two halves with the opening holes heading south westward along flat ground beside the railway line. The flatter nine holes of the opening half whet the golfer’s appetite for the contrast that awaits on second nine. Here you will find valleyed corridors through some of the highest and wildest dunes found anywhere. Each hole occupying its own unique site never shared with another.
Double Open Champion Australian Greg Norman graciously wrote an unsolicited note to the Club after playing in the PGA tournament at Hillside in 1982 stating the: ‘The back nine holes are the Best in Britain.’ Jack Nicklaus described the course as ‘…a wild looking links’ and added that ‘…within the second nine are some of my favourite holes’. -2019
It is a par 72 course measuring at 6849 from the White tees, which on the face of it might not seem too long, but as with all Links golf, its defences are not its length but in the natural elements that complement the course. What immediately becomes apparent when you play Links golf for the first time is the way you have to think differently and strategise in completing a hole. It is not as simple as taking Driver off every Par 4/5 because where ever your ball pitches (and ultimately rolls to) there will be some kind of danger left or right, in the form of a devilish pothole bunker, thick fescue rough, or on occasions the odd brook – Hillside has all of these waiting for any errant shots. -2017, Top100GolfCourses
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