Royal Lytham and St. Annes Golf Club - England

Royal Lytham and St. Annes is one of Britain's most incongruous championship courses, for it embodies all the characteristics of seaside golf, including odd bounces on the lumpy fairways and phalanxes of pot bunkers, but the links is surrounded by the red brick row-houses of urban England. Lytham lies about a mile from the coast, with a railway line running along the course's seaward side and homes built by the St Annes-on-Sea Land Building Company, founded by a group of Lancashire businessmen in 1874, on the other. The club was founded in 1886 by Alexander Doleman of Musselburgh, Scotland, a talented golfer who had opened a school in the then fashionable resort of Blackpool. In 1897, the club moved to its present site, with the course laid out by George Low and subse­quently refined by Herbert Fowler, Harry Colt, and C.K. Cotton. Bobby Jones won the first British Open held at Lytham in 1926, and the mashie he used for his miraculous escape from sandy perdition on the 17th hole hangs in the clubhouse. Seve Ballesteros was the winner in both 1979 and 1988, while Tom Lehman became the first American professional to win the Open at Lytham in 1996.

Royal Birkdale Golf Club - England

The Lancashire coast of northwest England running north from Liverpool to the town of Southport offers an abundance of outstanding links courses, including Southport & Ainsdale, Formby, Hillside, and West Lancashire, but none feature more majestic dunes than Royal Birkdale. Birkdale is also considered an excep­tionally fair links, which helps to explain its popularity for championship events, having hosted eight British Opens since it became part of the "rota" in 1954, as well as two Ryder Cup Matches and the Walker Cup. The original course opened in 1889 but the club moved to its present site in 1897, and the course was revamped by Fred Hawtree and J.H. Taylor in 1931. The futuristic clubhouse, resembling a white, curvilinear ocean liner, was also built in 1931. The holes ripple through the sandhills, with the greens sequestered between the dunes. Birkdale has had an illustrious list of Open champions. Arnold Palmer won his first British Open title at Birkdale in 1961, overcoming a gale that ripped through the course on the second day of the tournament, while Peter Thomson, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Ian Baker-Finch, and Mark O'Meara have also won at Birkdale.