Hornsea Golf Club

On the Holderness coast of East Yorkshire, beside the largest freshwater lake in the county, Hornsea has run as a members' club since 1898, taking up its current ground a decade afterwards. Sandy Herd, Open Champion in 1902, drew the original eighteen holes; Alister Mackenzie and James Braid each altered the layout in later years, and Howard Swan was brought in during 2010 to rework and remove bunkers. Links in its design principles, the course opens with seven holes running towards a water tower that serves as a marker across that stretch. Gorse grows on the property alongside thorn shaped by exposure to the wind coming off the North Sea. Elsewhere the ground is gently undulating parkland broken by belts of trees. Practice ground lies near the eighteenth tee, with a chipping area and putting green immediately outside the clubhouse. Hornsea town sits between the mere and the sea, a Victorian resort that grew after the railway arrived, and the surrounding Holderness plain is among the flattest farmland in the north of England.