Play Competitive Golf in East Anglia & The East of England

East Anglia and the East of England host one of the most varied amateur open programmes in the country, with singles, pairs and team events from March to October across coastal links, true heathland and historic parkland. Norfolk's championship links and clifftop courses run from Hunstanton on The Wash round to Sheringham, Cromer and Great Yarmouth on the North Sea coast; the Suffolk heritage coast adds James Braid heathland at Thorpeness and Aldeburgh; and Hertfordshire is home to clubs of genuine golfing significance — including Verulam in St Albans, where Samuel Ryder donated the Ryder Cup itself. Whether you're searching by county or planning a golfing break, our 2026 calendar helps you find the right event in East Anglia and the East of England.

East Anglia's golfing geography is unusually deep for a region that flies below most golfers' radar. The Norfolk and Suffolk coastlines run for over a hundred miles with a near-continuous chain of links, clifftop and coastal heathland courses, while inland the sandy Breckland heath produces firm year-round playing surfaces close to towns like Swaffham and Thetford. Closer to London, the Hertfordshire green belt holds a concentration of Golden Age parkland courses on land that was once royal hunting ground — a couple of these, like Hadley Wood, predate Augusta National by a decade or more. Add in well-organised opens at characterful clubs across Essex, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and the East genuinely punches above its profile.

Hunstanton Golf Club, founded in 1891 on the North West Norfolk coast overlooking The Wash, is one of the great traditional English links and the only course on England's east coast where the sun sets over the sea. George Fernie of Troon laid out the original nine, extended to 18 in 1896. James Braid was commissioned in 1907 to toughen it up, recommended 60 bunkers (the committee bargained him down to 40), and those bunkers still shape the course today. James Sherlock made further changes in 1923, Ken Cotton moved the 17th and 18th closer to the sea in 1951, and Martin Hawtree has overseen more recent refinements. The 6,741-yard par-72 course is a classic out-and-back design routed either side of a central dune ridge. Hunstanton has hosted the Brabazon Trophy five times, the English Amateur four times, the Women's Amateur Championship six times (most recently 2022), and the Boys' Amateur twice — and was the scene in 1974 of one of the most extraordinary feats in amateur golf history when Leicestershire's Bob Taylor holed in one at the 191-yard par-3 16th on three consecutive days during the Eastern Counties Foursomes. A bench beside that tee records the achievement.

Sheringham Golf Club occupies an extraordinary clifftop strip between the North Sea cliffs and the North Norfolk Railway in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Founded in 1891 by local MP Henry Broadhurst, with the original nine laid out by Tom Dunn (who returned in 1898 to extend to 18), the course gained early renown when Braid, Vardon, J.H. Taylor and the 1907 Open Champion Arnaud Massy played a four-ball here in 1908. Sheringham has hosted the English Ladies' Championship three times — and is most famous as the venue where, in 1920, the great Joyce Wethered won her first English Ladies' title at the age of 18. Standing over a putt to close out the match as a steam train rattled past, when asked afterwards if the noise had distracted her, she allegedly replied "What train?" — golf's most quoted demonstration of concentration. The 6,546-yard par-70 layout features clifftop holes 5, 6 and 7 (the par-4 5th, Stroke Index 1 with a drive across a ravine toward the sea, is one of the most photographed tee shots in English golf), and steam and vintage diesel trains still rattle past several inland holes today.

Hadley Wood Golf Club, opened on 27 May 1922 just 12 miles north of central London, is widely cited as the only surviving Dr Alister MacKenzie design in southern England — and importantly, it predates his work at Augusta National by a decade. Laid out across 265 acres of former royal hunting ground that once formed part of Enfield Chase under Henry V, the par-72 parkland course was MacKenzie's chance to develop many of the design principles he would later use at Augusta — multi-tiered plateau greens, bold strategic bunkering, and routing that uses elevation rather than length to defend par. The opening four-ball on the day the course opened featured six-time Open Champion Harry Vardon partnering Ted Ray against George Duncan and A.J. Smith (Vardon shot 71 against a bogey of 78 for the course record). The Grade II listed Georgian clubhouse — Beech Hill Park Mansion, built by Crown surveyor Francis Russell in 1781 — anchors the property. Hadley Wood hosted Open Championship Regional Qualifying from 2000 to 2005, and since 2021 has been undergoing a comprehensive MacKenzie-led restoration overseen by architect Clyde Johnson.

Verulam Golf Club in St Albans is, in the most literal sense, the home of the Ryder Cup. Founded in 1905 on land leased from the Earl of Verulam, with a nine-hole course by civil engineer Ernest Phillips extended to 18 by James Braid in 1911, the club is forever bound to one of its most famous members: Samuel Ryder — St Albans seed merchant, three-time Verulam Captain (1911, 1926, 1927), and the man who in 1926 commissioned the trophy that bears his name. Ryder joined the club in 1909, hosted a paid professional tournament here in 1923, hired Verulam's professional Abe Mitchell (the figure atop the Ryder Cup trophy) as his personal coach, and after watching an early Britain-vs-America match at Wentworth donated the gold cup that became golf's most famous biennial prize. Beyond that history, the course itself is a genuinely good Braid parkland test on rolling Hertfordshire ground close to St Albans Cathedral and the Roman city walls of Verulamium. A portrait of Abe Mitchell still hangs in the clubhouse.

Swaffham Golf Club, founded on 3 May 1922 on Norfolk Breckland heath two miles from the town centre, is one of the most under-rated heathland courses in England. The original 9-hole layout was set out by Captain B.K. Wilson — at the time secretary of Royal West Norfolk (Brancaster) — on land owned by the 10th Baron Suffield, and was funded by six local gentlemen who each paid £50 to build the course. In 2001, Steve Marnoch and Jonathan Gaunt added a further nine through mature woodland, blending the new holes seamlessly into the original Breckland character. The 6,473-yard par-71 layout plays firm and fast over well-drained sandy soil, with subtle elevation changes, well-positioned bunkers and greens kept in genuinely outstanding condition. Reviewers regularly compare it favourably to Woburn. Opens here combine real strategic interest with one of the most welcoming clubhouses in the region.

Thorpeness Golf Club on the Suffolk Heritage Coast is a James Braid design that opened in 1922 and was extended to 18 holes the following year. The course was commissioned by Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie — a Scottish barrister and architect whose family fortune came from building railways in Russia and South America — as part of his purpose-built holiday village of Thorpeness, complete with country club, boating lake (the Meare) and the famous "House in the Clouds" water tower disguised as a five-storey cottage. Ogilvie later planted nearly a million trees around the course and surrounding land. The 6,421-yard par-70 layout plays through heather, gorse, pine and silver birch on quick-draining sandy soil; the Sunday Telegraph Golfing Guide called it "reminiscent of the inland glories of Sunningdale and Woodhall Spa." Henry Longhurst rated the par-3 3rd as one of his favourite holes in golf, and the par-4 12th plays toward the House in the Clouds as backdrop. Thorpeness hosted the English Seniors Championship in 2012 and the Logan Trophy in 2021.

East Anglia and the East of England combine some of the most distinctive scenery in southern Britain. The Norfolk Broads — a network of navigable rivers and lakes designated a National Park — sits within easy reach of the coastal golf courses, while the Suffolk Heritage Coast (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) runs from Lowestoft through Southwold and Aldeburgh to the Deben estuary. Inland, Norwich's medieval cathedral and castle, the Roman city walls of St Albans (the original Verulamium), and Cambridge's college backs reward any non-golfing day. The big skies that drew Constable to paint the Stour Valley still define the region today.

Whether you pair an opens trip with coastal walks past Cromer or Aldeburgh, a college visit in Cambridge, a tour of the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, or a Ryder Cup history pilgrimage to Verulam in St Albans, golf in East Anglia and the East of England offers a sporting experience as rich in heritage as the landscape itself.