Qualla: Royal Troon Golf Club

Royal Troon Golf Club: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0. The eighth hole at Royal Troon is one hundred and twenty-three yards long. It is called the Postage Stamp. From the elevated tee a player looks down at a tiny green pinched between sandhills and bunkers, the Firth of Clyde stretching beyond it, the wind doing whatever the wind decides to do. Major champions have walked off that green with double bogeys and the bewildered look of people who have just been mugged by geometry. Two holes later, the eleventh - called the Railway - asks a blind tee shot over gorse, with out-of-bounds running along the railway line on the right and a small green that falls away at the back. They are the most famous pair of consecutive holes in championship golf, and they are why the Open Championship keeps coming back to this stretch of South Ayrshire sand.

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Image: Richard Webb | CC BY-SA 2.0

Royal Troon Golf Club: Five Holes to Forty-Five

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. Royal Troon began in 1878 with five holes scratched out of the dunes south of the town. By 1884 the original course had grown to eighteen, designed by the club's first professional George Strath in partnership with Willie Fernie, who had won the 1883 Open Championship. Charlie Hu...

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Image: dave souza | CC BY-SA 4.0

Royal Troon Golf Club: Royal in 1978

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Goodreg3, CC0. The Open Championship arrived at Troon in 1923 and has returned ten times. The course was granted its Royal designation in 1978, the year of its centenary. The clubhouse, built in 1886 to a design by Henry Edward Clifford, holds an astonishing collection of historical golf artifa...

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Image: Goodreg3 | CC0

Royal Troon Golf Club: The Vote

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 1 July 2016, a few weeks before the Open Championship returned to Troon, the club's members voted overwhelmingly to admit women as members for the first time in its history. The R&A had already made clear that clubs which excluded women would lose their place on the Open rota....

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Image: Rosser1954 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Troon Golf Club: The Railway and the Stamp

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0. The par-5 sixth, called Turnberry, runs six hundred and one yards along the railway line - until 2023 it was the longest hole in Open Championship history, eventually surpassed by the par-5 fifteenth at Royal Liverpool. Two holes later comes the Postage Stamp eighth, where a slig...

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Image: dave souza | CC BY-SA 4.0