A true championship links, overhauled in the 1960’s by renowned architect Fred Hawtree, Hillside is regarded as probably the finest links golf course not to have hosted the Open Championship. The club has a track record of staging some of the highest profile professional and amateur tournaments including the 1982 PGA Championship (When Tony Jacklin defeated Bernhard Langer in a Play Off) and twice the Amateur and Ladies Amateur Championships. A regular Final Qualifying venue for the Open, Hillside has recently been chosen by the European Tour to host the 2019 British Masters.

 

The layout of the course is balanced in two halves with the opening holes heading south westward along flat ground beside the railway line. The flatter nine holes of the opening half whet the golfer’s appetite for the contrast that awaits on second nine. Here you will find valleyed corridors through some of the highest and wildest dunes found anywhere. Each hole occupying its own unique site never shared with another.

 

Double Open Champion Australian Greg Norman graciously wrote an unsolicited note to the Club after playing in the PGA tournament at Hillside in 1982 stating the: ‘The back nine holes are the Best in Britain.’ Jack Nicklaus described the course as ‘…a wild looking links’and added that ‘…within the second nine are some of my favourite holes’.