The seaside courses of Wales you have never heard of
Royal Porthcawl at £125 midweek in winter, Nefyn around £70, and neighbours from £48: the best value links in Britain.
Wales has a coastline of links golf that most British golfers drive past on the way to somewhere more famous, and green fees that are frequently half what the equivalent course would charge in England or Scotland. Here are the ones worth the detour.
Royal Porthcawl, the one everybody names
Royal Porthcawl is the highest-ranked Welsh course in the Golf Monthly Top 100 for the UK and Ireland, and the only one on the list that costs like an English championship links: the main-season visitor green fee is £250, with a twilight rate of £185 after 3pm on Sundays. Out of season, from November to February, the midweek rate drops to £125, coffee and a bacon roll included.
That off-season figure is the interesting one. A links on sandy soil is playable in winter, and £125 for a course of that rank is the best-value round in this article.
Nefyn and District, the one that surprises everybody
On the Llŷn Peninsula in north-west Wales, Nefyn runs an Old Course and then eight holes along a narrow spit called The Point, with fairways and tees perched above small coves. It is the most photographed golf in Wales for good reason, and it sits at around the £70 mark at prime time, less after one o’clock and less again after three.
Take a camera and take spare balls. The two facts are related.
Southerndown, the downland links
Designed by Willie Fernie and later modified by Donald Steel, Southerndown sits high on a hill above the coast with tight lies, undulating fairways and views over the sea. It plays like a links without being on the beach, which means firm ground and a ball that runs, on turf that drains all winter.
Pennard, on the Gower
One of the oldest courses in Wales, laid out on cliffs above the Gower coast. It is short by modern standards and entirely unbothered by that: the wind and the setting do the work. If you play one round in south Wales and it is not Porthcawl, play this.
Aberdovey and Royal St David’s, on the mid-Wales coast
Aberdovey sits in the Golf Monthly Top 100, and Royal St David’s, under Harlech Castle, ranks higher still. The two are within an hour of each other and make an obvious pair for a weekend, with the mountains of Snowdonia on one side and the sea on the other.
The economics, in plain terms
Around Nefyn, neighbouring courses sit in the £48 to £65 range: Porthmadog, Bull Bay, North Wales at Llandudno, Abersoch, Borth and Ynyslas. That is the whole argument for Welsh golf. You can play four coastal links in a weekend for less than one round at a famous name across the border.
Rates change by season, day and time of day, and the figures here were the published ones at the time of writing. Confirm with the club when you book.
How to build the trip
These are not long courses by modern standards, several of them measuring well under 6,500 yards, and that is the point: the wind supplies the length.
North Wales and south Wales are separate trips, not one. The Llŷn Peninsula and the mid-Wales coast form a natural northern loop around Nefyn, Porthmadog, Aberdovey and Royal St David’s. Porthcawl, Southerndown, Pennard and Tenby form the southern one.
Two rounds a day is realistic here in a way it is not in Scotland, because the courses are shorter and closer together. Book the expensive round first and fill the rest around it.
Before you go
- Royal Porthcawl green fees, including the winter midweek rate.
- Wales Golf: the club directory and visitor conditions across the country.
- iGolf if you need an official Handicap Index; several of these clubs ask visitors for one.
Take waterproofs whatever the forecast says. This is a coast, and the coast decides.
