What is the UK’s most convenient links course to play? What a ridiculous question. Of course, it’s subjective – it depends on where you live, where you plan to visit. How long are you willing to travel for to play the course? There are a hundred variables and quite clearly no right answer.
Well, I have a rogue suggestion. Please bear with me.
I opted to fly rather than drive to Castletown and left my home in Hoylake just before 7am. 40 minutes later, managing to just avoid the real morning rush, I was dropping my clubs off with the smiling Logan Air attendant at Liverpool Airport.
The propellers on the little aircraft, adorned in a tartan design only Scotland’s national carrier could pull off, started spinning at 8.15.
30 minutes later, we’d landed. The conveyer belt carrying my clubs (thankfully, it’s always a relief seeing them) was just jolting into action as we walked into the terminal at Ronaldsway Airport, and the dozen of us on the flight wandered out to the waiting line of taxis.
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Out the expectant driver jumped, loading the clubs into the boot, and asking how the journey had been. We had barely asked about his island home before we pulled into the car park of Castletown Golf Links eight minutes later. I checked my watch: 9.05. From door to first tee, with no stress and little effort, it had barely taken more than two hours.
It made me think how many others lived within an hour’s drive of the domestic airports that directly link with Ronaldsway. There are nine. Three in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester. Obviously Liverpool, as well as Glasgow and Edinburgh. With the help of my old calculator and some rather dry government data, I worked out that there are over 44 million people living in such proximity. 44 million people, 62% of the country, who are maybe 2 and a half hours from the first tee of Castletown. All of them able to play a round in the morning, a second in the afternoon and still go to sleep in their own bed that same night.
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But is it worth the trip?
Well, how many links courses can you think of that can thank Old Tom Morris, Alister MacKenzie and Philip MacKenize-Ross (associate of the great Tom Simpson, the man who gave us Southerness and Turnberry) for their design? How many can you think of that see the ocean from every single hole. How many are flanked by water on three sides of the course? How many demand heroic drives and mid irons struck with conviction over crashing waves and gnarled rock?
There aren’t many, and too many golfers are missing out on something special.
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This is an excerpt from Volume 2 of Sam Cooper’s Links from the Road journals.
This 18-volume series includes detailed, deep-dive features on every links course in Great Britain. Read the full version of this essay in Volume 2: Fylde Coast, Lake District & Cumbria. It is available to purchase now from www.linksfromtheroad.com for £19.95 with subscription offers also available.
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