Sand Moor Golf Club

Sand Moor is one of three Alister MacKenzie courses within a few miles of each other north of Leeds, alongside Alwoodley and Moortown. Construction began in 1921, the course opened to the public in July 1922, and the club was formed in 1925 when it leased the ground from the original developer. MacKenzie sat on its first greens committee.

It is a par 71 of 6,446 yards: three par 5s, eleven par 4s and four par 3s.

What it asks of you

The four short holes are the reason to come. All four are MacKenzie originals, and reviewers who know the Leeds courses rate them as a set above anything else on the property. A par 3 that a good player cannot birdie at will is harder to build than a long par 4, and MacKenzie built four of them here.

The ground is moorland falling towards Eccup reservoir, so most holes have a slope in them somewhere and very few lies are flat. That is the quiet difficulty of the course: the yardage is short by modern standards and the stance almost never is what you expected.

Henry Cotton added four holes in the 1960s after the club bought more land, and Andy Watson Golf Design has been updating the course to hold up against modern equipment while staying with MacKenzie’s intent.

What players say about it

This is a private club with visitor access, well covered in the English rankings. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The four MacKenzie par 3s are named in almost every account as the best thing about the course.
• The views over Eccup reservoir come up nearly as often.
• Conditioning and greens are consistently well reported.
• Playing it with Alwoodley and Moortown makes a MacKenzie trip that few places can match.
• The welcome to visitors is repeatedly mentioned.

What comes up against

• At 6,446 yards it is short, and low handicaps say so.
• It is the third-rated of the three Leeds MacKenzie courses, and visitors on one round tend to pick Alwoodley.
• The Cotton holes are not to everyone’s taste beside the MacKenzie ones.
• Moorland in a Yorkshire winter is heavy going.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Alwoodley, six miles north of Leeds city centre and about half an hour from Leeds Bradford airport.

The season is year-round, but the moorland turf is at its best from May to September. Visitor times are arranged in advance.

Green fees

Visitor rates are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, the club’s published history and encyclopaedic entries for the 1921 construction, the 1925 founding, MacKenzie’s role and Henry Cotton’s additions, and public course records for par, yardage and the distribution of holes. The opinion section summarises public reviews read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played this course, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.