Silloth on Solway Golf Club

Silloth on Solway is the finest links the tour visits and one of the best courses in the country, laid out on the Cumbrian coast with the Solway Firth in front and the Galloway hills and Criffel visible across the water in Scotland. The club was founded in 1892, backed by the North British Railway Company, which had just brought the line to the town.

Davy Grant, the professional from North Berwick, laid out the original course. Willie Park Jnr remodelled it around the turn of the century and Alister MacKenzie made further alterations after the First World War. It is a par 72 of 6,641 yards through dunes, heather and gorse, with blind drives over the ridges, sunken punchbowl greens and putting surfaces the club itself cheerfully describes as handkerchief-sized. The 9th, a par three to a near-island green, and the 13th, the signature par five over banks of heather, are the two everyone talks about afterwards.

Silloth hosted the Carris Trophy in 2022 and the English Amateur in 2012, and was home club to Cecil Leitch. Junior coaching runs every Saturday morning and junior membership starts at a nominal figure for under-twelves.