Alistair Dunsmuir

The new clubhouse at Royal Dornoch has been operating at unprecedented levels since opening in December, with bar sales quadrupling in May and the kitchen serving twice as many plates as during the same month last year.

Willingdon Golf Club in Eastbourne has raised more than £30,000 towards a borehole that will cut its reliance on mains water, after members hit a £15,000 Crowdfunder target in little over a fortnight and unlocked a matching £15,000 National Lottery grant from Sport England.

Matt Vigurs has achieved what England Golf is saying may be the longest hole-in-one in English history – a 411-yard hole-in-one at Great Barr Golf Club in the West Midlands this weekend, which, unsurprisingly, was also an albatross.

Members of the 135-year-old West Middlesex Golf Club have launched a petition, now past 4,800 signatures, after Ealing Council approved a settlement stripping the club of its 75-year lease and replacing it with a deal that expires next year – a move the club says would force it into insolvency and cost 27 jobs.

Rounds of golf played in Great Britain in the first half of 2026 were up on every year this decade except record-breaking 2025, according to new data, which shows that appetite for the game remains strong.

After three years of in-house operation, The R&A has appointed Northwind Leisure Golf as operating partner for its Golf It! community facility in Glasgow.

Tewkesbury Park has appointed former footballer Emma ‘Lev’ Levett as its first Golf Commercial Manager, tasked with a new three-year plan for golf as the resort shifts towards a whole-resort subscription model.

Scottish Golf and the Camanachd Association have secured Scottish Government funding to offer free golf and shinty sessions to young people in rural Scotland this summer, tapping into the two sports’ shared Highland heritage and similar skills.

New England Golf figures show 12.6 million adults played some form of golf in the last year, with junior membership up 34% in 2025, as the sport launches Get into Golf Week to build on the momentum.

Golf group Mytime Active says participation at its golf courses has never been stronger, with almost 700,000 rounds played across its sites between March 2025 and March 2026.

Derek Kingsbury, St Enodoc Golf Club’s longstanding member, marked his 100th birthday with a golf day on the Holywell Course, joined by 70 players, six-year-old member Louis Westlake, and a 100-guest clubhouse party with dancing to The Gershwin Gang.

HowDidiDo and intelligentgolf have partnered with Pin Vision to combine scoring and competition management with live GPS, course mapping and pace-of-play tools, giving golfers and clubs a single, joined-up digital platform.

Forest Hill Golf Club, a 140-acre course in Leicestershire’s National Forest, has entered administration. FRP Advisory will bring the 600-member club to market for sale, while it remains fully operational and open to new members in the meantime.

Hart Common Golf Club will install a height barrier after roughly a dozen caravans occupied the course for two days, damaging greens and forcing closure.

A former world champion boxer has called on a Nottinghamshire council to not close down a 120-year-old golf club in order to build hundreds of new homes.

Toptracer will trace every shot of The 154th Open’s global broadcast, offer fans live QR-code shot data on-site and power 20+ simulators across Royal Birkdale – including a new Global Challenge giving fans worldwide the chance to win tickets to The 155th Open at St Andrews.

A study testing four UK golf operators across AI platforms found the same club can rank strongly on one and vanish entirely on another – with operators having no visibility into how AI assistants are describing or recommending their venues to prospective golfers.

Matfen Hall opens its new 18-hole championship course, The Douglas.

The number of golf rounds played per course across Great Britain saw a large year-on-year decline in the opening quarter of 2026 according to new data, but it was still up on 2024 and participation levels are very strong at the moment.

The Professional Golfers’ Association of Great Britain & Ireland has appointed Nicholas Oakley as its next chief executive.

La Grande Mare in Guernsey has said it will open its redesigned 18-hole pay-and-play course in August, with greens built to the same specification as Adare Manor and green fees of £200 per round.

Duddingston Golf Club in the Lothians has appointed David MacMullen as its new head professional, and he will work alongside assistant professional Katie Graham.

Essex venue Golf Kingdom, which was acquired by Blackedge Golf and British Ensign Golf less than a year ago, has relaunched under the new name Whalebone Golf Club – positioning itself as a barrier-free, community-led club where dress codes and gatekeeping have no place.

In Great Britain and Ireland, membership of golf clubs dropped to a low of just over a million in 2019. That figure now stands at 1.35 million – the highest it’s been since 2010, according to new R&A figures.

One of the oldest golf clubs in England is to have its clubhouse demolished and housing will be built where it currently resides.