Squeezed between the Dee and the Mersey, Wirral packs a serious amount of golf into a small peninsula. Twenty-two clubs are spread across Bebington, Birkenhead, Moreton, Prenton, Wallasey and the wider Wirral area, and the course-type mix tells its own story: six parkland layouts, five links courses and a single heathland club sitting above the sandstone. Green fees start from around £50, which for a region with this concentration of links pedigree is worth knowing before you book.
Links golf shaped by the coast
The links courses are the obvious draw. Royal Liverpool Village Play Artisans, founded in 1869 at Hoylake, has hosted 13 Open Championships and staged the first Amateur Championship in 1885 and the first Ladies' Amateur Championship in 1896 — it's one of the oldest seaside clubs in England and it shows in the way the course reads. A short drive away, Wallasey has its own weight of history: laid out by Tom Morris Snr and later reworked by Alex Herd, Harold Hilton, James Braid, and Hawtree with J H Taylor, it has staged Open qualifying on four occasions and was where Bobby Jones qualified for the 1930 Open, a round good enough to have his portrait commissioned. The first Stableford competition was played there in 1932, which is a nice detail for anyone who's ever cursed the scoring format on a bad day. Leasowe, founded in 1891 on the peninsula's north shoreline, had John Ball Junior as its first captain and still plays out beneath Leasowe Castle, with views stretching to North Wales and the Lake District on a clear day. At the western tip, Caldy runs alongside the River Dee with the Welsh hills across the estuary, and continues to host Open Regional Qualifying on behalf of the R&A.
Parkland variety and a heathland outlier
The parkland clubs give the county its balance. Heswall, founded in 1902 by Jack Morris and later touched by Harry Vardon, Frank Pennink and Donald Steel, sits above the Dee Estuary and has a habit of attracting future stars — Patrick Reed won the Junior Open there in 2006, and Matthew Fitzpatrick took the Northern Junior Open on the same course in 2012. Bromborough, laid out on the old Leverhulme Estate, has carried genuine championship weight, hosting the English Amateur Matchplay in 2005 and the English Men's Seniors in 2003. Eastham Lodge, overlooking the Mersey, has picked up an Outstanding rating and a Top 100 UK mention, while Arrowe Park, a municipal course dating to 1932, once hosted an Open qualifier with Sir Henry Cotton and Peter Allis in the field and remains largely as it was then. The county's one heathland course, Wirral Golf Club in Prenton, is the most distinctive round on the peninsula: designed by two-time Open champion Harold Hilton on elevated, sandstone-backed ground, with small greens and bunkering that punishes a loose approach. It began life as Wirral Ladies' Golf Club, founded by a group of pioneering women in 1894.
Beyond the eighteen holes
Not every club here is chasing championship history. Bidston, founded in 1913, runs more than 130 competitions a year and was a 2025 England Golf Awards finalist for both its sustainability work and its volunteers, which says something about the club's day-to-day character rather than its trophy cabinet. Brackenwood in Prenton, a municipal course with around 180 members, has run the Wirral Open Golf Championship since 1986. For practice rather than a full round, Moreton Hills Golf Centre offers a six-hole course, a Toptracer range and floodlit astroturf bays open all year, useful for keeping something ticking over between rounds at the bigger clubs. Between the links tradition at Hoylake and Wallasey, the estate parkland at Bromborough and the heathland test at Wirral, the peninsula covers most bases within a short drive of Liverpool and Chester.