Cleveland Golf Club · Est. 1887
A Yorkshire Links Since 1887
Nearly 140 years of links golf, shaped by the North Sea and influenced by some of the game’s greatest architects.
Heritage timeline
- 1887
- Club founded on the Coatham Links
- 1890
- Expanded to a full 18 holes
- Old Tom Morris
- Visited and advised on improvements
- Harry S. Colt
- Course refinement, mid-1940s
- 2000
- Donald Steel’s three new holes
- Today
- Yorkshire’s Championship Links
The Founding
A Golf Club Is Born on the Coatham Links
Before there was a golf club, there were dunes. The Coatham Links belonged to the Kirkleatham Estate, grazed under rights held locally, and historical accounts record that it was here, in 1886, that a group of young men playing hockey were first shown the game of golf by a local Coastguard captain, who produced a cleek and a gutta-percha “gutty” ball and demonstrated what could be done with them.
The farmer holding grazing rights over the land was unimpressed by this informal golf, but indicated that if a proper club were formed and ground rent paid, play could continue. Historical accounts place the resulting meeting at the Lobster Hotel in Redcar on 3 May 1887, when Cleveland Golf Club was formally established with around 180 members.
The original course measured nine holes, expanding to a full eighteen by around 1890. In those earliest years, the course was barely designed at all in the modern sense — the dunes, hollows and natural contours of the linksland were the architecture. As C. A. Ridley wrote in a letter to the Yorkshire Post at the time, there was “no such thing as an incorrect place for a bunker.”
The Architects
Three Eras of Golf Course Design
Across its long history, Cleveland has been shaped and refined by three particularly important names in golf course architecture: Old Tom Morris, Harry S. Colt and Donald Steel. None of them built the course from nothing — each inherited a links already shaped by the ground itself, and left it stronger for their involvement.
The Pioneer
Old Tom Morris
1821–1908
Golf’s original elder statesman — champion golfer, greenkeeper, clubmaker and course designer, forever associated with St Andrews — Old Tom Morris visited Redcar in the club’s formative years, after the course had already grown from nine holes to eighteen, and advised on improvements to the developing links.
His involvement connects Cleveland directly to the founding philosophy of links golf: working with the ground’s natural contours rather than imposing artificial features upon them.
The Strategist
Harry Shapland Colt
1869–1951
One of the defining golf architects of the early twentieth century, Colt lent his eye to many of Britain and Ireland’s most celebrated courses. Architectural records identify him with a remodelling of Cleveland’s layout in the mid-1940s.
Colt’s broader philosophy favoured strategy over punishment — angles, positioning and decision-making, with hazards placed to test judgement rather than simply catch the wayward shot. It’s the strategic eye the club’s own records credit him with bringing to Cleveland’s layout.
The Modern Chapter
Donald Steel
Golf course architect
Around the turn of the millennium, the club’s traditional first and eighteenth holes — together with the old clubhouse and practice ground — came under threat as the lease on land at the town end of the course drew to a close. Donald Steel was commissioned to design three new holes on land nearer the sea, completed in 2000.
It was evolution rather than reinvention: another architectural chapter added to a links already more than a century old, keeping Cleveland a full eighteen-hole championship test.
1914–1945
A Links Shaped by History
Twice in the twentieth century, war reached the dunes at Redcar. Both times, golf gave way to the needs of a country under threat — and both times, it returned.
The First World War
With troops stationed at Redcar, the links were drawn into coastal defence. Trenches and machine-gun emplacements were dug among the dunes, and a large gun was positioned on the course itself. Four holes became unplayable for the duration, and the clubhouse — itself only recently built — was requisitioned by the military.
The wartime clubhouse was subsequently destroyed by fire while still in military hands — one of several losses the club absorbed before golf could properly resume.
The Second World War
A generation later, war returned to the links. Barbed wire and further defensive works again cut across the course, and, as in the previous conflict, the clubhouse was pressed into military use.
As before, the club endured, and golf resumed on the dunes once peacetime allowed.
The Evolving Links
A Course Remade by Its Surroundings
Cleveland’s course has rarely stood still. What began as nine holes had grown to a full eighteen within its first few years, and a new clubhouse followed in 1934 as the club’s membership and ambitions grew alongside it.
Much of that story is told through the land itself. For most of the club’s history, part of Cleveland’s traditional layout occupied ground at the town end of the course, near Majuba Road — golfing use of which came to an end in 2002. By then, Donald Steel’s three new holes, built in 2000 on land nearer the sea, had already kept Cleveland a complete eighteen-hole championship links — evolution, once again, rather than compromise.
Sense of Place
Between Dunes, Sea and Industry
Cleveland has always been a links shaped not only by the sea, but by Redcar itself. For generations, golfers have played through natural duneland beneath the industrial skyline of Teesside — an extraordinary meeting of traditional links golf and the working landscape of the North East.
Rather than a contradiction, it’s part of what makes Cleveland distinctive: authentic coastal linksland, the River Tees close by, and a view unlike any other championship course in Yorkshire.
Championship Heritage
A Course Made for Competition
Cleveland’s championship pedigree has grown steadily alongside its architecture, culminating in one of the finest rounds in the club’s history and a growing role on the national amateur calendar.
- Since 1887A home for Yorkshire amateur golfCleveland has featured on the Yorkshire amateur golf calendar for much of its history, hosting county and open events long before its modern championship era.
- 2007English Golf Union County Finals
- 2011Yorkshire County Team Championship
- 2017Yorkshire Amateur ChampionshipWon by Alex Fitzpatrick, who set a course record of 62 during the week.
- 2025Yorkshire Amateur ChampionshipCleveland once again hosted Yorkshire golf’s premier amateur event.
- 2027Brabazon Trophy Northern QualifierCleveland is set to host a qualifying round for the English Men’s Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship.
Established 1969
The Cleveland Salver
Cleveland’s long-running 36-hole scratch competition and the traditional season-opener for the Yorkshire Order of Merit — one of the fixtures of the northern amateur golf calendar.
1887–Today
The Links Today
Almost 140 years after golf was first played across these dunes, the fundamental challenge remains remarkably familiar. Cleveland plays to 6,921 yards from the championship tees, a par 72, at the mercy of the North Sea wind.
The ground is firm and fast-running, the bunkers deep, and the rough unforgiving — links golf that rewards imagination and control over raw distance. As a true sand-based links, Cleveland plays year-round, offering the same honest test in December as in the height of summer, weather permitting.
1887 — And Still Evolving
A Links That Has Never Stopped Changing
Cleveland Golf Club has never been a museum piece. Its course has changed because the world around it has changed. It has expanded from nine holes to eighteen, survived two world wars, seen clubhouses lost and rebuilt, and adapted as the landscape of Redcar changed around it.
Through it all, golf has remained on the dunes.
Old Tom Morris. Harry Colt. Donald Steel.
Each encountered a different Cleveland, and each contributed to the links inherited by today’s members and visitors. What connects those generations is the ground itself — sandy soil, coastal grasses, natural contours and the North Sea weather that were here before Cleveland Golf Club was founded in 1887.
The landscape has evolved.
The challenge remains.