A small county with an outsized pedigree
Solihull doesn't have many golf clubs, but it punches well above its weight. Just six courses serve the area, mostly clustered around Solihull itself with one out towards Coventry, and green fees start from around £50. What the county lacks in numbers it makes up for in design quality and genuine golfing history, some of it central to the game as we know it.
Copt Heath Golf Club, founded in 1907, is a Harry Colt design running through tree-lined fairways and defended by nearly 100 bunkers. It has been ranked among National Club Golfer's Top 100 courses and hosts the Peter McEvoy Trophy, a well-regarded junior open. Colt's other Solihull work, Robin Hood Golf Club, is arguably even more storied: Henry Cotton and Henry Longhurst both visited, and Dr Frank Stableford, a member there, devised the Stableford scoring system that every club golfer in the country now takes for granted. Robin Hood's mature trees and lush fairways lead into a set of finishing holes with a reputation for testing nerve as much as skill.
Parkland dominates, with one heathland outlier
The county's course-type mix is mostly parkland, with three of the sampled clubs falling into that category, against a single heathland layout. That heathland course is North Warwickshire Golf Club, a nine-holer founded in 1894 on the site of the old Packington Racecourse near Meriden, often cited as the centre of England. It's a convenient stop for golfers based in either Coventry or Birmingham, and its 18-tee layout combined with genuinely good drainage means it stays playable even in extreme wet weather, a rare boast for a course of that age.
The parkland courses each bring something distinct. Shirley Golf Club, founded in 1955 on 140 acres in Solihull, was set up specifically to welcome golfers regardless of faith or background, and it still hosts England Golf championship events, including the Midlands Open in 2024. It also runs a Golf For Disabled Children programme that has been going for 15 years. West Midlands & Solihull Golf Club takes parkland golf to a grander scale: 234 acres incorporating the 21-acre Barston Lake, USGA-spec greens and tees with sand-base undersoil drainage, and two holes that golfers travel to see for themselves. The 8th,