Royal St George’s Golf Club

Royal St George’s Golf Club has occupied its ground at Sandwich since 1887, when Dr William Laidlaw Purves laid out a links that still feels unconventional, exacting and entirely its own. It was the first club outside Scotland to host The Open, doing so in 1894, and its place on the championship rota gives the course uncommon weight in English golf. The terrain is pure Sandwich dunesland: rumpled fairways, awkward stances, sudden rises and falls, and greens that demand precise placement rather than force. Nothing about the round feels manufactured. Instead, the challenge comes from natural golfing ground and the need to control flight, bounce and position from start to finish. That championship character is matched by rarity: Royal St George’s remains the only course in South East England on The Open rota. For golfers building a Kent links itinerary, it is the central round.