Newquay Golf Club

With glorious views across the headland and the famous surfing beach of Fistral, Newquay Golf Club was formed in 1890 when a 4,325-yard links was laid out for the founding members.

Newquay Golf Club survives today due to rioting by farmers and fisherman who opposed the building of The Headland Hotel on the site where they grazed their livestock and dried their nets. Despite the riots, the hotel was finished and is now a striking and ever-present landmark, however the planned housing estate was not developed and so the links survived.

When additional leased land became available in the early 1900s, Harry Colt was called in to ring the changes. The following paragraph was published in the Newquay Golf Club Centenary Book:

“Mr. Colt had laid out the new course in the most approved modern style of golf planning, dog-leg holes being one of the chief features. Many bunkers had been made and others filled up, and no expense had been spared in the effort to make the best possible use of the course.”

The course Colt laid out more than one hundred years ago is essentially the 6.141-yard layout that’s in play today. The routing is far from out-and-back. Holes loop this way and that across land which at first glance looks uninspiring. The entire course slopes away quite markedly from the clubhouse down towards Fistral Beach, but the layout doesn’t feel hilly.

A sunken sandy footpath dissects the northernmost third of the links and this walkway must be negotiated six times during a round. Golfers will hardly spot beach walkers on this path from the fairways, whereas brightly coloured boards carried on surfers’ shoulders are more likely to seen. After all, Fistral Beach is the home of British surfing.