Royal St. George's Golf Club - England

There are few more joyous places to play golf than Royal St. George's in Sandwich, with the larks trilling above the links ovor looking Pegwell Bay. The course is on the Channel Coast, with Prince's adjoining to the north and Royal Cinque Ports in Deal just to the south. The overwhelming feature of St. George's is the immense sand dunes, with the fairways running through the cloistered valleys. St. George's was founded by Dr. Laidlaw Purves, an eye specialist from Edinburgh, who first gazed upon the chain of giant sandhills when he and some friends climbed to the top of St. Clement's Church in Sandwich. The course opened to great acclaim in 1887, was chosen as the site for the British Amateur in 1892, and then became the first course in England to host the Open Championship two years later. From 1894 to 1949, Sandwich held the Open nine times. The par-five fourth displays one of the most cavernous bunkers in the United Kingdom, while the par-five 14th is crossed by a small stream known as the "Suez Canal." St. George's again began hosting Opens in 1981, and has been the scene of two of the more remarkable recent Opens, with Greg Norman sailing to victory in 1993, and Ben Curtis, the darkhorse from Ohio, pulling off his stunning upset in 2003.

Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club - England

Royal Cinque Ports, or Deal, as it is more commonly known, lies just a mile or so south of its more famous neighbor, Royal St. George's, on the Kent coast in southeast England. The course runs north and south along a narrow strip of dunes by the pebble ridge that drops abruptly to the English Channel, stretching from the outskirts of Deal Town to the south to the beginning of Sandwich Bay to the north. The spine of dunes that runs the entire length of the course reaches its apex on the fourth tee, creating classic linksland golf with a more exposed quality than the massive, sheltering sandhills of St. George's. Founded in 1892, Deal hosted the Open championship in 1909 and 1920, but it is better known in England as the home of the annual Halford Hewitt Challenge Cup, a team competition among the English Public Schools inaugurated in 1924. The insidious canal that runs through the first and 18th holes, reminiscent of the Swilcan Burn at St. Andrews, has figured prominently in the annals of golf at Royal Cinque Ports.