Royal Porthcawl

There are no sand dunes at Royal Porthcawl. The ground is a single slope tilting down to the shore, the sea is in view from all eighteen holes, and nothing stands between a golfer and the wind off the Bristol Channel. Cardiff businessmen founded a club in 1891 and put nine holes on Lock's Common, laid out by Charles Gibson, the professional at Westward Ho!. In 1895 they leased from the Margam estate the ground the course occupies now, and Ramsay Hunter, who had earlier laid out Royal St George's, designed it. Edward VII granted the Royal prefix in 1909.

The Amateur Championship has been played here seven times; Dick Chapman won in 1951, and in 1980 Duncan Evans became the first Welshman to take it. Great Britain and Ireland won the 1995 Walker Cup 14–10. Bernhard Langer won Senior Opens in 2014 and 2017, Alex Čejka in 2023, and Miyū Yamashita won the 2025 AIG Women's Open. The black tees stretch the course to 7,217 yards and the white play it at 6,639, but the wind decides which of those is the longer day. Bernard Darwin, surveying the courses of the British Isles in 1910, called the golf here "the genuine thing": the sea in sight the whole way round, and bunkers he thought as noble as any.