Moortown Golf Club

About the club

The legendary Alister MacKenzie designed two neighboring courses outside Leeds. One of these, Alwoodley, is private, not very large and features a rural setting; Moortown, by contrast, is larger and better known, especially as a venue for tournament play. The course opened in the 1910s, but first achieved recognition in 1929 when England and Ireland, captained by the great George Duncan, managed to edge out the US in the debut of the Ryder Cup in England. Moortown has also hosted the English Amateur Championship and the Brabazon Trophy (Britain's Stroke Play Championship in all but name) in addition to a couple of other venues. A kind of hybrid of park- and heathland, the setting evokes the moors from which the club takes its name. A piece of club lore holds that a particularly contentious match ended with one golfer hitting from inside the bar through a window onto the final green.