Inside the clubhouse
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When the world’s greatest golfers descend on Royal Lytham for its 11th Open Championship this July, they will step into a clubhouse with golf’s history woven into its fabric. The front step of the 1898 building itself, an ordinary concrete block, has been worn a full two inches by more than a century of the game’s greatest players, from Harry Vardon onwards. The clubhouse itself, clad in golden oak and dazzlingly opulent for its time, is as much museum as 19th hole. The locker room has never been updated; the only sign of the passing of time is the benches, pock-ridden by a century of spike-marks.
Upstairs, the corridors and social rooms vibrate with golfing memories. Pride of place in the clubroom is the definitive portrait of a bluejerseyed Bobby Jones, complete with the mashie he used to play one of golf’s most famous shots en route to winning the 1926 Open. Elsewhere, memorabilia lines the walls; clubs from all 10 of Lytham’s Open winners; Tony Jacklin’s lost winner’s cheque from 1969 (for £4,250); the legend from the club’s first ever competition, where one member shot a 244; and a rare image of England’s first ever professional tournament, taken in 1890, with the likes of Morris, Park and Fernie gazing out at the camera. But this is just the start. The only true way to appreciate the place is to pay this friendly club a visit. Few places give such insight into a century of golf.
