Glamorganshire

Glamorganshire Golf Club’s course was established in 1890 on land granted to the members by Lord Windsor, Earl of Plymouth. The original 9-hole track was laid out by the club’s first professional then another professional was chosen to extend this design to a full 18-hole layout in time for hosting the 1897 Welsh Championships.

According to the book James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses by John F. Moreton & Iain Cumming, James Braid was engaged by the club to modify the course, resulting in “new bunkering on eight holes, new tees on four, and a different approach to the 13th. In September 1912 Vardon, Ray, Duncan and Braid played an exhibition match to play in all Braid’s improvements.”

Glamorganshire Golf Club is listed in the Simpson & Co. catalogue of courses, but we do not know what work Tom Simpson actually performed since Braid's earlier modifications.

The course measures a modest 6,184 yards from the medal tees, with back-to-back par fives at the 3rd and 4th holes and back-to-back par threes at the 13th and 14th holes. The signature hole on the card is the left doglegged, 419-yard 16th, the second in a run of testing par fours close to home. The fairway rises to a narrow, elevated green from where the totally unanticipated view of five English counties across the Bristol Channel is something to behold – and well worth the climb!

Glamorganshire lays claim to the club being where the Stableford scoring system was first practiced as far back as 1898. Doctor Frank Stableford was a member here long before he moved onto Royal Porthcawl and then Wallasey, where he perfected the system that has been use in amateur circles all around the world since the 1930s.