Quality without Pretence: Manchester Golf Club

There are golf clubs where you arrive through iron gates, hushed driveways and manicured flowerbeds and you know straight away you’ll be expected to tread lightly. Manchester is not that kind of place. Another Harry Colt masterpiece and set on 240 acres of moorland just outside the city, The Manchester Golf Club announces itself differently. Open, expansive and confident in its golf rather than its ceremony. 

The land rises and falls with a natural grandeur, fairways curving into valleys and climbing again to greens that perch like stages. It feels serious in its quality but never aloof and from the first moments you sense this is golf without pretence.

No round here begins on the first tee. It begins in the clubhouse, with a sausage sandwich that belongs as much to the club’s reputation as its greens. Thick, smoky, unapologetic, a breakfast that sets you up for the day and makes you glad you came hungry. 

Manchester doesn’t do dainty; it does hearty. The club carries an assured confidence, golfers drifting in and out, all of them treated with the same easy welcome, whether they’re long-time members or first-time visitors.