The seaside courses of Wales you have never heard of

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.

Playing well as a visitor

Two things decide how a visitor is judged on a Welsh links, and neither is the score. Pace first: keep in touch with the group ahead, let a faster group through if a hole opens, and leave the bag on the side of the green nearest the next tee.

Ground care second. Replace divots, repair your pitch mark and one more, and rake bunkers properly, dragging the sand to the low side and entering at the lowest point. On links land, where wind moves loose sand about, an unraked bunker is the reason the next player has an unplayable lie.

And play the forward tees. A championship links from the back markers is an endurance test for most amateurs; the same course two sets forward is a very good day, and the handicap system converts every set correctly through course rating and slope.

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.

What Welsh links golf asks of you

All of these courses sit on sand, and sand plays nothing like the clay most inland British courses are built on. It drains in hours rather than days, stays firm for most of the year, and the ball runs a long way after it lands. A drive that finished at 200 yards at home finishes at 230 here, which brings bunkers into play that were never a consideration.

Two adjustments follow. Land approaches short of the flag and let them run, rather than flying the ball to the pin. And around the greens, take the putter or a low runner rather than an open wedge: on a tight lie over firm ground, the shot that looks least impressive is the one that works.

The third is wind, which on this coast is the round rather than a detail of it. Into the wind, take more club and swing at eighty per cent, because a hard swing adds spin, spin makes the ball climb, and a ball that climbs into a headwind falls out of the sky. Downwind, the ball flies and runs, and greens that held in the morning will not hold in the afternoon.

When to go

Wales has a longer links season than most of Britain, because sand drains and the coast is mild. April, May, September and October have good surfaces, quiet tee sheets and rates well below high summer, and several of these clubs publish a winter midweek rate that is a fraction of the July figure.

July and August are the busiest weeks and the ones where visitor times are hardest to get. If you have a choice, take the shoulder months and accept less reliable weather in exchange for the course to yourself.

Ask about hollow-coring when you book. For two or three weeks after the greens are cored and sanded they are bumpy, the green fee is often reduced, and that argues for a spontaneous outing rather than the round you have been looking forward to since February.

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.

Where to stay and how to get there

Wales divides into three practical bases. The south coast around Porthcawl and Southerndown, within easy reach of Cardiff and the M4. The Gower, from Swansea out to Pennard, which is a short peninsula with everything inside twenty minutes. And the mid-Wales and Llŷn coast, around Aberdovey, Royal St David’s and Nefyn, which is further from everywhere and the reason people come back.

Book the tee times before the accommodation. Rooms exist along all three coasts; visitor times at the best-known clubs in summer do not, and the times you get should decide the shape of the trip.

Without a car, the Cambrian Coast line runs along the mid-Wales coast and stops close to several of these clubs, which is unusual in British golf and worth knowing. A golf bag counts as luggage you stow yourself; reserve a seat near the multi-purpose area, and ask the club about hire clubs in the same call as the tee time.

Where to book and check

Book directly with the clubs. Their own pages carry the visitor conditions, the handicap limits where they apply and the seasonal rates, and the secretary knows what the website does not: whether a competition blocks the course on your day, when the greens were last cored, and whether there is a reduced rate for members of an affiliated club.

Wales Golf lists affiliated clubs and their conditions across the country, including the smaller coastal courses that never appear in rankings. And if you need an official Handicap Index, several of these clubs ask visitors for one; iGolf and the equivalent schemes provide one without club membership.

If the best-known names are full, the neighbouring courses on the same coast sit on the same ground, take bookings at short notice and cost considerably less. A trip built on those with one famous round is a better trip than three days spent chasing availability.

If the famous names are full

They frequently are in summer, and the trip is not over. The neighbouring courses on all three coasts sit on the same sand, face the same wind and produce the same golf, and they take bookings at short notice for a fraction of the price.

Wales Golf lists them, and the clubs themselves answer the phone. A week built on two lesser-known links and one famous round is a better week than three days spent chasing availability, and it is how most people who come back have organised 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, a second glove in a plastic bag and a hat that stays on. This is a coast, and the coast decides what kind of golf you get to play that day.

Which is, in the end, the reason to come. Welsh links golf costs a fraction of its equivalents across the border, it takes visitors without ceremony, and on a bright, windy September morning it is as good as the game gets in Britain.

Where this shows up on a course

Three links courses from our directory, where this is the everyday reality.

• Moray Golf Club: Old Tom Morris laid out the Lossiemouth links in 1889, sixteen holes at first: revetted bunkers, gorse-lined fairways and a par 71 finishing back towards the town.
• Prestwick Golf Club: The course where the Open began on 17 October 1860, over three rounds of twelve holes: twenty-four Opens, blind shots, and a wind off the Firth of Clyde.
• Buckpool Golf Club: A J.H. Taylor clifftop links built in 1933 as relief work when the herring fishery failed: a par 70 of 6,127 yards above the North Sea, with nowhere to hide from the wind.

We have not played these courses; each page says what it is based on.