Kent, United Kingdom

The Royal St Georges Golf Club (1017145)

William Laidlaw Purves founded St. George’s in 1887 with the ambition of carrying the ethos and traditions of St. Andrews into southern England. The Sandwich setting gave that project a landscape of its own.¹

Location: Kent, United Kingdom
Course: 18 holes · par 70
Original architect: William Laidlaw Purves

An English counterpart to St. Andrews

In 1894, St. George’s became the first venue outside Scotland to host The Open. Collin Morikawa’s victory in 2021 continued a championship association that had begun more than a century earlier.¹

The course

Follow each course for its scorecard, design history, and sources.

CourseThe Royal St Georges Golf Club18 holes · par 70 · Scorecard and course history

Championships

Results and dates 15 editions

The Open Championship

1894
J.H. Taylor
1899
Harry Vardon
1904
Jack White
1911
Harry Vardon
1922
Walter Hagen
1928
Walter Hagen
1934
Henry Cotton
1938
Reg Whitcombe
1949
Bobby Locke
1981
Bill Rogers
1985
Sandy Lyle
1993
Greg Norman
2003
Ben Curtis
2011
Darren Clarke
2021
Collin Morikawa

Continue through the archive

Follow the course and the people behind it.

ArchitectWilliam Laidlaw PurvesOriginal design · The Royal St Georges Golf Club · 1887

Sources and editorial notes4 references

Sources for this story

The Club Royal St George’s Golf Club
Main historical account, course development and individual-hole descriptions.
Consulted 2026-09-21

Record sources

Royal St Georges Course Guide Now Live | The Open
The Open Records and Statistics The official Champion Golfers register directly enumerates this playing with ordinal, venue, and champion. Historical venue and champion spellings follow that register; any trailing parenthesized win count is occurrence metadata and is not part of the recorded winner name. The official Previous Opens decade record independently cross-checks the reviewed identity. Dates are null because the reviewed register does not state them, and no date was inferred.
The Open: championship venues The official Open venue directory, historical guide, and named Course evidence bind this continuing venue identity. Historical routing and scoring conditions are not replaced by current scorecard values. Championship venue source: www.theopen.com; Club location source: www.theopen.com. The 2026 Royal Birkdale result is separately verified by the bound final-round report.