Play Competitive Golf in Berks, Bucks & Oxon

The BB&O region (Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire) hosts arguably the strongest concentration of inland championship golf in England, and its open competition calendar reflects it. From the Berkshire-Surrey sandbelt around Ascot — home to Sunningdale, Wentworth, The Berkshire and Swinley Forest — out to Frilford Heath in Oxfordshire and the 54-hole estate at Woburn near Milton Keynes, the region's open programme runs across world-class heathland, mature parkland and modern championship venues. In 2026, the R&A's Women's and Men's Senior Amateur Championships are jointly hosted at Frilford Heath (7-10 July), and Woburn's Marquess Course continues as one of just four Open Championship Final Qualifying venues in England. Whether you're searching by county or planning a golfing trip, our 2026 calendar helps you find the right event in BB&O.

The Berkshire-Surrey sandbelt that runs roughly between Ascot and Camberley is one of the most fortunate accidents in English golfing geography: free-draining sandy soil, naturally undulating terrain, and a Golden Age (roughly 1900-1930) coinciding with a generation of architects — Harry Colt, Herbert Fowler, Tom Simpson, Willie Park Jr — who knew exactly what to do with it. The result is a cluster of inland courses that rival the great Surrey heathlands across the M25 for architectural quality. Beyond this golden belt, Oxfordshire's Frilford Heath provides 54 holes of championship-grade heathland, and Buckinghamshire's Woburn estate adds three pine-and-heather courses on the Bedfordshire border. With consistently exceptional turf, year-round playability, and a deep open competition calendar, BB&O is essential territory for the serious amateur golfer.

The Berkshire Golf Club, founded in 1928, is one of only three British clubs — alongside Sunningdale and Wentworth — to have two courses simultaneously ranked in the Top 100 of GB&I. Both the Red and the Blue were laid out by Herbert Fowler (the same architect who built Walton Heath two decades earlier) across 372 acres of Crown Estate that had once been part of Queen Anne's hunting ground. The Red is famous for its unusual 6-6-6 par configuration — six par 3s, six par 4s and six par 5s — while the Blue starts with a daunting par-3 carry over heather and finishes with five demanding par 4s. Bernard Darwin, writing in the club's 1930 handbook, praised Fowler's "art that has mellowed with experience and has gained something in variety, in subtleness and in picturesqueness." The Berkshire hosts two long-running annual flagship amateur events — The Berkshire Trophy (men, since 1946) and The Astor Salver (ladies, since 1951) — with past Berkshire Trophy winners including Michael Bonallack, Peter Oosterhuis, Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Eddie Pepperell and Ross Fisher. It has also hosted the English Amateur, the British Senior Amateur, the Women's Home Internationals and the Vagliano Trophy.

Swinley Forest Golf Club, on Crown Estate land just south of Ascot, is among the purest expressions of English heathland golf and one of the most quietly private clubs in the country. The course was commissioned by Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby — a founder member of Sunningdale who, depending on which version of the story you prefer, was either tired of slow play, frustrated by Sunningdale's policies on women, or simply encouraged by King Edward VII to "build his own course." The land at Swinley Forest, part of Windsor Great Park, was provided on a peppercorn rent, and Lord Stanley commissioned Harry Colt — then Secretary at Sunningdale — to design the layout, which opened for play in September 1911. Colt famously described it in a letter to Tom Simpson as his "least bad course." At just over 6,400 yards across rolling heather, pine, azalea and rhododendron, Swinley was deliberately built for enjoyment rather than championship play — it didn't even issue scorecards or run formal competitions until the 1990s. Tom Doak rates the routing as essential study for architecture students. Visitor access is limited and almost always by prior arrangement, making any chance to play here genuinely rare.

Woburn Golf Club, set within the Duke of Bedford's 3,000-acre Woburn Abbey estate near Milton Keynes, was the country's first 54-hole venue to have all three of its courses simultaneously featured in Golf World and Golf Monthly's GB&I Top 100s. The Duke's (Charles Lawrie, 1976) hosted the British Masters for twenty years and threads through corridors of pine, silver birch and chestnut. The Duchess (Lawrie, 1978) is the most secluded and tactical of the three. The Marquess (Peter Alliss, Clive Clark, Ross McMurray of European Golf Design and Alex Hay, 2000) is a 7,214-yard "Jewel in the Crown" that straddles the Bedfordshire–Buckinghamshire boundary, hosted the 2019 AIG Women's British Open, and has been one of just four R&A Open Championship Final Qualifying venues in England since 2014. Ian Poulter is the men's touring professional; Charley Hull the women's. Across nearly 60 professional tournaments hosted, Woburn has become one of the most decorated competition venues in the country.

East Berkshire Golf Club, established in 1903 in Crowthorne near Wellington College, was originally designed by Peter Paxton — the Musselburgh clubmaker who finished runner-up at the 1880 Open Championship — and has matured from its heathland origins into a tree-lined hybrid course retaining strong heathland features. Paxton's distinctive use of natural water courses guards the greens at two of the short holes, while large banks of heather act as cross-hazards on several second shots, doing the job that conventional bunkers usually do elsewhere. The 6,236-yard par-69 layout is relatively short by modern standards but plays much longer through clever doglegs and fast, undulating greens. The East Berks Stag — the club's annual amateur scratch competition for handicaps of 6 and under — was inaugurated in 1976 with Sandy Lyle winning it in his teens; later visitors and Stag competitors include Bobby Locke, Gary Player and Luke Donald. Howard Swann oversaw a recent refresh of the course.

Frilford Heath Golf Club, seven miles south-west of Oxford, is one of the few clubs in England with three full 18-hole championship courses on 500 acres of sandy heathland — what Bernard Darwin called "a wonderful oasis in the desert of mud" in 1910. The Red Course was laid out in 1908 by J.H. Taylor, five-time Open Champion and one of the Great Triumvirate with Vardon and Braid; eight original Taylor holes survive largely unchanged today. The Green Course was designed by long-serving club professional J.H. Turner with a post-WWII extension by C.K. Cotton. The Blue Course was added by Oxfordshire architect Simon Gidman in 1994. Frilford has hosted the English Amateur (2013), the Brabazon Trophy, Ryder Cup trials and Open Regional Qualifying, and was granted Royal patronage by Edward VIII during his brief 1936 reign. In 2026 it co-hosts the R&A Women's and Men's Senior Amateur Championships, 7-10 July, on the Blue and Red courses — pushing the standard of opens at the club for the rest of that season to genuine championship level.

Buckingham Golf Club, founded in September 1914 by four local gentlemen as a nine-hole course in the rolling Ouse Valley of north Buckinghamshire, is a genuine community parkland club that has steadily invested in its course over more than a century. Extended to 18 holes in the 1970s, with all 18 greens rebuilt to USGA specification in 2004, and a complete new irrigation system installed in 2020-21, the 6,162-yard par-71 layout offers undulating tree-lined fairways, well-positioned hazards and views across the Ouse Valley to the parkland of Stowe. Greens are consistently rated among the best-conditioned in Buckinghamshire, and the hilly terrain provides a genuine test of fitness as well as ball-striking. With reasonable green fees, a busy open programme and one of the most welcoming clubhouses in the region, Buckingham is an accessible counterpoint to the heavyweights down the M40.

Few golfing regions in England are as well-positioned as BB&O. Windsor Castle, Ascot Racecourse and the Thames Path are within easy reach of the Berkshire heathlands; Oxford's medieval colleges and Blenheim Palace sit minutes from Frilford Heath; and the Cotswold edges, the Chiltern Hills (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), Marlow and Henley-on-Thames all add character to any golfing trip. Heathrow and Luton airports both sit inside the region, and the M4, M40, M3, M1 and the A34/A43 corridor between Oxford and Northampton mean most of England's golfers can reach a BB&O open within an hour or two.

Whether you pair tournament golf with a visit to Windsor, an Ascot race day, a Thames-side lunch in Marlow or Henley, or a wander through the Oxford colleges, playing opens in Berks, Bucks and Oxon delivers something close to the complete English golfing experience — championship-grade courses, deep amateur heritage, and a region that quietly hosts more elite competition than almost any other in the country.