There are golf courses, and then there are places where the game was invented by the weather. Royal Guernsey Golf Club at L'Ancresse is the latter. Perched on a common headland at the northern tip of Guernsey, it is a place where Bronze Age burial chambers sit between fairways, where Napoleonic watchtowers mark the horizon, and where the Atlantic wind arrives without apology and rewrites your scorecard before you have even addressed the ball.
The club was established in 1890 and awarded its Royal Warrant just one year later in 1891 — a distinction that speaks to the quality and character of the course from its earliest days. The present layout was redesigned in 1949, but the land it occupies is ancient in the truest sense: L'Ancresse Common has been grazed, farmed, fought over, and walked across for thousands of years. The golf course is simply the most recent and most civilised use of it.
Today, two clubs share this remarkable peninsula — Royal Guernsey Golf Club and L'Ancresse Golf Club, founded in 1895 as an artisan club. Both alike in dignity, as one visiting writer put it, both their houses plagued by rabbits a few years back, though you would scarcely know it now. The common is also shared by walkers, surfers heading for the twin beaches, and a small conservation herd of Guernsey cattle that has been grazing the land again in recent years, keeping the rough in check and the ecology in balance.
A par 70 at 6,215 yards, the course looks manageable on paper. It is not. Every day is different. Every tide brings a change. A straightforward par four becomes a bruising par five from one morning to the next when the westerly arrives. This is links golf at its most honest — a game played with the elements, not against them.
135 Years of Links Golf
A Common Ground
L'Ancresse Common is one of those rare places where human history has accumulated in visible layers. Bronze Age kitchen middens and burial chambers sit alongside the fairways of the first few holes — staggeringly ancient, as one visitor noted, these people founded our world so we could play golf from Bronze to irons.
The Napoleonic watchtowers — squat, square, built in haste against an invasion that never came — now serve as the most distinctive landmarks in links golf. They appear on the horizon from almost every hole, giving the course a visual grammar that is entirely its own. During the Second World War, German forces occupied Guernsey and used the common for military purposes; concrete bunkers from that occupation still punctuate the rough, a reminder that this ground has absorbed more than just wayward drives.
The 1949 redesign by the club gave the course its modern character — a layout that makes intelligent use of the natural undulations, the coastal duneland, and the prevailing wind. The front nine runs through corridors of thick gorse; the back nine opens up toward the sea with long views across L'Ancresse Bay and Pembroke Bay.
A Napoleonic watchtower guards the back nine — one of several that define the course's unique skyline
The Front Nine
The Lesson of Gorse
The gorse at L'Ancresse is not decorative. It is structural, punitive, and — in late spring when it erupts in a blaze of coconut-scented yellow — almost unbearably beautiful. The front nine runs through corridors of it, and the lesson it teaches is simple: stay on the fairway, or pay the price.
The first hole is a lovely par four where bravery across the dog leg is rewarded with a short pitch and run to the green. The eighth is a fine example of the course's character — a drive across the road (used mainly as a footpath) and between banks of gorse, requiring good positioning to enable an aggressive shot to a well-guarded, steeply banked green.
The fourth is stroke index one — a long par four that is unattainable in two for most mortals. The third par three demands that you play short, as near to the bunker as you dare, and run the ball close to the pin. Every green has a false front, a steeply banked approach, or a devious wind to contend with. There is not a pin position on the course that is not challenging.
"Play the wind well and you can use these hard running links to manoeuvre the ball to the most advantageous position to attack the flags. Courses like these can look simple on a map but every day is different, every tide brings a change."
The Back Nine
Sea Views and the 18th Tee
The back nine opens up. The gorse corridors give way to wider, more exposed terrain with long views across the bays and out to sea. Wet-suited surfers and Glenmuir-suited golfers occupy the same horizon. Martello towers and sandy strollers straggle across the fifteenth as structural ridges break up the fairway and afford glimpses of a raised green — a lovely hole in any conditions, but a different story entirely in a stiff westerly.
The long par five on the back nine runs uphill and into the wind. A lagged putt for par and a smile at the top of the course, with the best views of all. The closing holes are not long on the card — which could feel anticlimactic without a breeze. But the eighteenth is something else entirely.
A par three of 150 yards from an exorbitantly high tee, into a cross wind. You can try to steer your ball on the way up. It does not belong to you on the way down. It is the perfect ending to a round that has asked questions of you all day — and the perfect beginning to a conversation in the bar about what you might have done differently.
The Course
L'Ancresse in Pictures
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Just Gerald Verdict
The Scorecard
Overall Rating — Course of the Month No. 1
Course Character
Ancient common land, Napoleonic towers, Bronze Age burial mounds — nowhere else on earth
Challenge & Variety
Par 70, 6,215 yards — deceptively short until the wind arrives
Gorse & Scenery
Golden walls of gorse frame almost every hole on the front nine
Clubhouse & Facilities
Warm, well-run, driving range, pro shop, bar & restaurant
The 18th Experience
Par 3 from an exorbitant height into a cross wind — the ball is not yours on the way down
A Personal Note
A Birdie at Five
My grandfather was a member here when I was young. I played every day. I learned the lessons of gorse — that it is not a hazard to be avoided but a teacher to be respected. I learned the lesson of bad weather — that a round in the rain on a Channel Island links is not a hardship but a privilege. And I learned the delight of a birdie.
My club had a black shaft and a thin 3-iron shape. It rattled my hands every time I hit it — except once. A par three. Looking down from the tee. I swung. Click. Whistle. Near the green. Another shot. In the hole. A birdie. My fifth birthday. The course gave me that.
Golfing with friends and relatives may seem a bit weird to some — a game of patience and silence played in a landscape that demands your full attention. But it does an essential job. It slows you down. It puts you in the same place at the same time. It gives you something to talk about that is not work, not money, not the news. It gives you a shared language of near-misses and improbable pars.
Royal Guernsey Golf Club is where I first understood that. It is where the game became something more than a game. And it is where we begin our celebration of golf courses around the world — the places that do this essential job better than anywhere else on earth.
Here's to golf courses around the world. Guernsey is our first. Best Day Ever.
— Gerald Shaffer, Just Gerald Magazine
Plan Your Round
Address
L'Ancresse, Vale, Guernsey, GY3 5BY
Phone
+44 (0)1481 246523
Course
Par 70 · 6,215 yards · Links
Facilities
Driving range, pro shop, bar & restaurant, locker rooms
Website
royalguernseygolfclub.com