The Belfry Brabazon Course: England's Ryder Cup Home
A guide to The Belfry Brabazon course in Warwickshire, England: its four Ryder Cups, the driveable 10th, the 18th over water and how visitors can play it.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Ryder Cup & Team Golf25 min read
- Course opened
- 1977
- Ryder Cups staged
- 4
- Designers
- Peter Alliss and Dave Thomas
- Par
- 72
The Brabazon is the championship course at The Belfry resort at Wishaw in Warwickshire, a few miles east of Sutton Coldfield and under ten miles north-east of central Birmingham. It is a parkland course of eighteen holes and par 72, designed by Peter Alliss and Dave Thomas and opened in 1977 on flat farmland, and it has staged the Ryder Cup four times, in 1985, 1989, 1993 and 2002. No other course anywhere has held the match as often. It is also a resort course that anyone with a handicap and a booking can play.
A small plaque beside the 10th tee at The Belfry records a single shot. In 1978, a year after the course opened, Seve Ballesteros aimed over the water and the trees and put his ball on the green of a par four. The hole had not been built as a stunt. From that afternoon it was one, and the course around it had a reputation before it had a history.
Where the Brabazon sits and what sort of course it is
Wishaw is a village in the north of Warwickshire with a Sutton Coldfield postal address, which is why the resort is described as being in both places. The M42 runs close by. The land is low, gently rolling at most, and was growing potatoes when the Professional Golfers' Association agreed in the mid-1970s to move its headquarters there.
Three courses share the site. The Brabazon is the senior one and the reason most people have heard of the place. It is named after Lord Brabazon of Tara, the aviator and politician who served as president of the PGA, and it measures more than 7,200 yards from the championship tees, although the tees visitors use are a good deal further forward.
What defines it is water. Lakes and streams come into play on a large share of the holes, usually at the point where the decision has to be made. That makes it the opposite of the older inland courses of England, where heather, sand and the slope of the ground do the defending. The Brabazon belongs to a different family, described more generally in our guide to parkland golf in England: tree-lined, soft underfoot for much of the year, and built by machinery to a plan.
It was designed with a second purpose that the old clubs never had. From the start the course was shaped to hold spectators, with banks around greens and holes that return to the hotel, and to hold them in numbers no heathland club could manage.
- 4Matches staged
- 2European wins
- 1Tied matches
- 1American wins
Results of the four matches played on the Brabazon course between 1985 and 2002. The 1989 tie left the trophy with Europe as holders.
The four Ryder Cups the Brabazon has staged
The Belfry's claim on English golf rests on seventeen years and four matches. Each of them turned on something that happened within sight of the hotel.
| Year | European captain | American captain | Result | Remembered for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Tony Jacklin | Lee Trevino | Europe 16½, USA 11½ | Sam Torrance's putt on the 18th green |
| 1989 | Tony Jacklin | Raymond Floyd | Tied 14-14 | Christy O'Connor junior's two-iron to the last |
| 1993 | Bernard Gallacher | Tom Watson | USA 15, Europe 13 | Davis Love beating Costantino Rocca on the 18th |
| 2002 | Sam Torrance | Curtis Strange | Europe 15½, USA 12½ | Paul McGinley's putt to halve with Jim Furyk |
1985: the end of twenty-eight years
Great Britain had last won at Lindrick in 1957. The team had been enlarged to take in continental Europe in 1979 and had lost all three matches since, the last of them by a single point in Florida in 1983. At The Belfry the United States led after the first day. The turn came on the Saturday morning, when Craig Stadler missed a very short putt on the 18th green that would have won a fourball against Bernhard Langer and Sandy Lyle. Europe took the afternoon foursomes, led 9-7 overnight, and won the singles comfortably. Torrance, level with Andy North playing the last, watched North drive into the lake and then holed across the green for a birdie he did not need. He was in tears walking up the fairway.
1989: fourteen each
Europe arrived as holders, having won in America for the first time in 1987, and led by two points going into the final day. The singles came down to the 18th hole again and again, and it is covered in its own section below. José María Cañizares secured the fourteenth point that guaranteed the trophy would stay. The Americans then won the last four matches on the course to tie the contest at 14-14, the second tie in the history of the event after Royal Birkdale in 1969.
1993: the American win
Europe led by a point after two days. On the Sunday the match swung on two results from the middle of the order. Chip Beck came back from three down to beat Barry Lane, and Rocca, one up on Love with two to play, three-putted the 17th and lost the 18th. Nick Faldo made a hole in one at the 14th in his match with Paul Azinger, which was halved. Peter Baker, a Midlander playing his only Ryder Cup a short drive from home, won three points out of four. Up to and including the 2025 match it remained the last American victory on this side of the Atlantic.
2002: a year late
The match had been due in September 2001 and was postponed for twelve months after the attacks of 11 September, with both sides keeping the teams already chosen. That is the reason every Ryder Cup from then until the pandemic was played in an even year. The teams were level at 8-8 after two days. Torrance, now captain, sent his strongest players out at the top of the singles order; Strange kept Tiger Woods for the final match, which no longer mattered by the time it finished. The gamble with the order was the whole of Torrance's plan. He reasoned that a level match would be decided by whichever side got its colour on the scoreboard first, and that the home crowd would do the rest. Colin Montgomerie went out at the top and won heavily, Pádraig Harrington, Bernhard Langer and Thomas Bjørn followed him in, and by the time the American strength at the bottom of the order reached the closing holes Europe needed very little from those games. Phillip Price of Wales, ranked far below his opponent, beat Phil Mickelson in the lower half of the order. McGinley holed from about ten feet on the last green for the half point that settled it, and finished the afternoon in the lake beside the 18th with an Irish flag.
The complete record of the event, home and away, is in our list of every Ryder Cup result.
The 10th hole: a par four built to be driven
On the card the 10th is the shortest par four on the course, a little over 300 yards from the back tee. That figure misleads. The hole bends to the right around a stand of trees, a stream and pond run along the right side and across the front of the green, and the green itself is long, narrow and set at an angle to the line from the tee, so that a ball flying straight at it has very little depth to land on.
The sensible way to play it is with a mid-iron to the wide part of the fairway on the left, followed by a short pitch across the water. A professional makes three that way often enough and almost never makes worse than four.
The other way is to aim directly at the flag. The carry is all water and the ball has to fade round the trees and stop on a surface a few paces across. Succeed and there is a putt for a two. Miss short or right and the ball is wet. Miss long or left and the next shot is a chip from the trees towards the water.
How moving the tee makes the gamble real
The 10th has several teeing grounds, and the organisers of a tournament choose which to use each day. From the very back the green is out of range for many of the field and reachable for the rest only with a perfect driver, so nearly everyone lays up and the hole is merely a short par four. Bring the tee forward and the green comes within reach of a three-wood for most professionals. The lay-up then begins to look timid.
- Tee positionThe match committee sets the tee each session. Further forward, more players can reach the green.
- FourballsEach player has his own ball, so one partner can lay up safely and free the other to go for the green.
- FoursomesThe pair share one ball. A ball in the water costs both players, so the lay-up is far more common.
- SinglesThe player sees what his opponent has done first. An opponent on the green forces a reply, and an opponent in the water removes any reason to try.
- ResultA hole that can be won with a two or lost with a five in a format where a single hole is worth the same as any other.
A description of how the choice changes with the format and the state of the hole, not a record of any single match.
Match play is the reason the hole works. In a stroke play tournament a six on the 10th damages a whole card, and cautious players stay cautious. In a match the worst outcome is the loss of one hole. The arithmetic favours the attempt, and the crowd around the green knows it.
Why television kept returning to it
The hole sits beside the hotel, close to the 9th green and the 18th, so cameras and grandstands can cover all three. It produces a result in under ten minutes. And it comes at the start of the back nine, when the matches that will decide a session are passing through. For British viewers in the 1980s it became one of the few holes on an English inland course that people recognised on sight.
The 18th hole: two carries over the same lake
Raymond Floyd's team needed points from the closing holes on the last afternoon of the 1989 match, and one American after another reached the 18th tee with his match in the balance. Payne Stewart drove into the lake. So did Mark Calcavecchia.
The hole is a long par four of more than 450 yards from the back, bending to the left. The lake lies along the left side of the drive and cuts in front of the tee, so the tee shot is a diagonal carry: the further left a player aims, the more water he must clear and the shorter his second shot becomes. Bail out to the right and the ball is dry but in a bunker or rough, a long way from the green.
Then the water comes back. The fairway stops, the lake crosses in front of the green, and the approach, often a long iron or more for anyone who has played safely from the tee, must carry it to a putting surface that rises in three tiers towards the hotel. The green is very deep. A ball on the wrong tier leaves a putt of thirty yards with two steps in it.
What happened there on Sunday afternoons
| Year | Match | What happened on the 18th |
|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Sam Torrance v Andy North | North drove into the lake and Torrance holed for a birdie to win |
| 1989 | Christy O'Connor junior v Fred Couples | O'Connor hit a two-iron to within a few feet, and Couples missed the green with a much shorter club |
| 1989 | Ronan Rafferty v Mark Calcavecchia | Calcavecchia found the water and lost the hole and the match |
| 1989 | José María Olazábal v Payne Stewart | Stewart drove into the lake and Olazábal won one up |
| 1993 | Costantino Rocca v Davis Love | Love won the hole to take a match he had trailed with two to play |
| 2002 | Paul McGinley v Jim Furyk | McGinley holed from about ten feet for a half and the winning point |
O'Connor's shot is the one people in Britain and Ireland remember. He was a captain's pick whose selection had been questioned, he was level with one of the longest hitters in the game, and he had more than 200 yards to the flag with a two-iron in his hands. The ball finished close enough that Couples, shaken, pushed his approach wide and conceded.
The oddest of the 1989 finishes involved Seve Ballesteros, in the top match against Paul Azinger. Azinger, one up, drove into the lake, took a penalty drop and still won the match, because Ballesteros put his own second shot in the water in front of the green and could not win the hole. The best match player Europe has had lost by a hole on the one occasion the 18th offered him a gift. The lake does not distinguish.
The 18th is a hard hole in any conditions. Under Ryder Cup pressure it is harder for the player who is level or behind, because he has to take on the tight line from the tee, and that asymmetry is why so many matches have swung to the side that reached the tee in front.
The rest of the Brabazon course in sequence
The opening holes are the gentlest stretch on the course and the place to make a score. The 1st and 2nd are par fours of moderate length where the trouble is mostly sand, with water short of the green at the 2nd. Neither asks for a driver from a good player.
The 3rd is where the round starts. It is a par five that turns left around a lake, and the green sits on the far side of the water, so a long hitter can go for it in two with a carry that has to be struck perfectly, and everyone else must decide how close to the bank to lay up. The hole was rebuilt in this form in the late 1990s.
From the 4th to the 9th the course tightens. These are mostly par fours of substance, with one short hole at the 7th, where the green is heavily bunkered. The 6th asks for one of the straightest drives of the round. The 9th brings the player back to the hotel with an approach over the edge of the lake to a green that lies close to the 18th.
After the turn
Beyond the 10th the course heads out again. The 12th is a long par three across water, another product of the remodelling. The 14th is the short hole where Faldo made his one in 1993. Between and after them come par fours that reward position more than length.
The two par fives on the back nine, the 15th and 17th, are where professionals expect to pick up shots and where a singles match is often turned. The 17th can be reached in two only by a drive that takes on the corner.
Where a club golfer drops shots
A professional and a fifteen-handicapper do not lose strokes in the same places here. The professional loses them on the 18th, on the 6th and, when he is greedy, on the 3rd. The club golfer loses them wherever a forced carry meets a mishit: the second shot to the 9th, the tee shot at the 12th, both shots at the last. On a links a thinned iron runs up to the green. On the Brabazon it goes in the lake, and there are no cheap ways round.
Balls are the practical cost. Bring more than usual.
The greens are a second difference. They are large, and several have distinct levels, the 18th most of all. A professional's approach finishes on the right level nearly every time, and his first putt is a chance. A visitor who is pleased simply to have carried the water finds the ball forty feet away on the wrong tier, and three putts from there is the ordinary result. Good scores on the Brabazon come from approach play, which is not what the lakes lead a first-time visitor to expect.
How the course was changed after it opened
The Brabazon of 1977 was not a success. The ground was heavy, the newly planted trees were saplings, and the first tournaments played over it produced complaints about its condition. The 1981 Ryder Cup had been pencilled in for The Belfry and was moved to Walton Heath because the course was judged not ready.
Time fixed part of that. Thousands of trees had been planted during construction and they grew, giving the holes definition they had lacked. Drainage and greenkeeping improved through the early 1980s. By 1985 the course was presentable and, more to the point, it had already been chosen.
The larger change came in the late 1990s, with a fourth Ryder Cup awarded. Dave Thomas, one of the two original designers, was brought back to remodel the course. Water was added or enlarged on several holes. The 3rd became the par five around a lake that it is today, and the 12th was rebuilt as a par three over water. Tees were pushed back and bunkers moved to where modern drives finish.
The purpose was to give a match more holes on which something could be decided at a stroke. The original course had two, the 10th and the 18th. The remodelled one has five or six.
From potato field to match play stage
Flat farmland is poor raw material for golf. It has no natural green sites, no changes of level to hide one hole from the next, and it holds water. Alliss and Thomas dealt with the last problem by turning it into the feature, digging lakes that both drained the site and defended the holes, and using the spoil to raise banks behind the greens.
Those banks did two jobs. They gave the holes a backdrop, and they gave spectators somewhere to stand. On a classic heathland course the gallery walks in single file through heather and sees very little. Here several thousand people can watch one green from a slope. For stroke play that is a convenience. For a Ryder Cup, where the crowd is part of the contest, it changes the event.
Why the Ryder Cup went to The Belfry at all
The decision was commercial before it was sporting, and nobody involved pretended otherwise.
Until the 1970s the British half of the Ryder Cup belonged to the Professional Golfers' Association alone, and the PGA took the match to established clubs that were willing to have it: Lindrick, Royal Lytham and St Annes, Royal Birkdale, Walton Heath. The association had little money, the match made little, and the clubs gained prestige and not much else.
In 1977 the PGA moved its headquarters from offices at Kennington in south London to The Belfry, where the hotel's owners were building two courses and wanted a national name attached to them. The arrangement gave the PGA a home and a stake in a course of its own. Taking the Ryder Cup there followed naturally. The association would be host on its own doorstep, in the middle of England, beside a motorway, with a hotel on site for the teams and room for tents, car parks and television compounds that no members' club could offer.
The first attempt, for 1981, failed because the course was not fit. The second, in 1985, coincided with the first European win, large crowds and television pictures of a home team celebrating on a hotel roof. After that the case made itself. The match came back in 1989 and again in 1993, three home fixtures running at one venue, which had never happened before and has not happened since.
What the choice changed
The effect outlasted The Belfry's own turn as host. Since 1985 not one Ryder Cup in Europe has been played at a traditional members' club chosen for the quality of its course alone. Valderrama, the K Club, Celtic Manor, Gleneagles, Le Golf National and Marco Simone were all selected through commercial arrangements with an owner or a national federation, and all are modern courses with space built in.
The Belfry was the prototype for that. Whether it was good for the match depends on what the match is thought to be for. As a golf course the Brabazon would not make most lists of the best fifty in England. As a place to hold a three-day team contest in front of a large crowd it was, in 1985, better than anything else in the country.
The Belfry beyond the Brabazon
The PGA National and the Derby
The Derby, named after the Earl of Derby who was president of the PGA for many years, was laid out by Alliss and Thomas alongside the Brabazon and has always been the easier round. It is shorter, wider and more forgiving, and it is the course the resort steers higher handicappers towards. The PGA National came twenty years later, in 1997, and was the work of Dave Thomas alone. It is the more interesting second course: an attempt to give an inland Midlands site some of the feel of a seaside one, with a more open look and fewer trees than its neighbours.
The PGA's headquarters
The Professional Golfers' Association is still based at The Belfry. Its national headquarters stands within the grounds, along with the training facilities through which club professionals in Britain and Ireland qualify. The association founded in 1901 to represent working professionals therefore has its offices beside the course on which its most valuable asset was transformed.
Tournament golf since 2002
The Ryder Cup has not returned to England since Torrance's team won, and the Brabazon has spent the years since as a regular stop for the European circuit under its various names. The Benson and Hedges International Open was played there from 2000 until that tournament ended in 2003. The British Masters came for three years from 2006 and returned in 2021, staying through 2025; the history of that event is told in our piece on the British Masters.
Some of those weeks added to the course's stock of stories. Richard Bland won the 2021 British Masters at the age of 48, his first victory after more than twenty years of trying. Rasmus Højgaard won the UK Championship on the Brabazon in 2020, during the run of closed-door events arranged when the pandemic emptied the schedule, and five years later secured his Ryder Cup place on the same course, an episode covered in our explainer on how Europe's team is selected.
Playing the Brabazon as a visitor
This is the simplest part of the story. The Belfry is a hotel and resort, and its courses are open to anyone who books and pays. There is no waiting list, no member to sign a visitor in and no letter of introduction. For a golfer used to the procedures described in our guide to visitor access at English clubs, the difference is considerable.
Booking and price
Tee times are sold by the resort directly, online or by telephone, either as a single green fee or packaged with a night's stay, dinner and a second round on one of the other courses. The Brabazon costs more than the Derby or the PGA National on any given day. The fee is seasonal, highest in the summer months, lower in winter and at twilight, and hotel guests are usually offered a better rate than day visitors. Because the figures move every year no price is quoted here, and our explainer on how green fees are set in England covers the mechanics.
Golf societies and corporate days fill a good share of the tee sheet, especially midweek, so a weekend time in June wants booking well ahead.
Handicaps
The resort has applied a handicap limit on the Brabazon for many years and reserves the right to ask for proof. The limit is not severe and is aimed at pace of play. Check what is currently asked before paying, since a resort can revise it without notice. A golfer with no official index can obtain one through England Golf without joining a traditional club, as our guide to getting a handicap in England explains.
Choose the tee honestly. From the forward tees the forced carries on the 9th, 12th and 18th are manageable for a mid-handicapper. From the back they are not.
When to go
The course is at its best from late May to September. It is built on heavy Midlands soil and, like most parkland courses, plays long and soft in winter, when run on the fairways disappears and the lakes are full. Spring and autumn rounds are cheaper and quieter. In the weeks before and after a tour event the rough is thicker and the greens quicker than at any other time, which appeals to some visitors and punishes others.
Getting there and watching golf at The Belfry
Road is the obvious way in. The resort is on the A446 Lichfield Road, about a mile from junction 9 of the M42, and the M6 Toll has a junction close by. From central Birmingham the drive is around half an hour outside the rush hour. From London it is roughly two hours by the M40 and M42.
Public transport is workable and not convenient. There is no railway station within walking distance. Sutton Coldfield, on the Cross-City line from Birmingham New Street, is the nearest for local services, and Tamworth to the north-east is on the main line. Birmingham International, beside the airport and the National Exhibition Centre, has the fastest trains from London Euston and is a short taxi ride up the motorway. Birmingham Airport is about ten miles away by road.
During tournaments the organisers have generally run park-and-ride or shuttle buses from a nearby station, and details are published with the tickets each year.
Following play on foot
The Brabazon is an easy course to watch. It is flat, so a walk round all eighteen is not tiring, and the routing brings the 9th green, the 10th and the 18th together in front of the hotel. A spectator who stays in that corner sees every group play three of the best holes on the course without walking more than a few hundred yards.
The banks behind the greens, built for exactly this purpose, give a clear view over the heads of the people in front. Arrive early on the final day for a place on the mound behind the 18th. For a broader view of a round, the 3rd and the stretch from the 15th to the 17th are less crowded and show more shots.
The other English courses that have held the Ryder Cup
England has staged the match fifteen times on nine courses. The Belfry accounts for four of those and no other course for more than two.
| Year | Course | County | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1929 | Moortown | Yorkshire | Great Britain 7, USA 5 |
| 1933 | Southport and Ainsdale | Lancashire | Great Britain 6½, USA 5½ |
| 1937 | Southport and Ainsdale | Lancashire | USA 8, Great Britain 4 |
| 1949 | Ganton | Yorkshire | USA 7, Great Britain 5 |
| 1953 | Wentworth | Surrey | USA 6½, Great Britain 5½ |
| 1957 | Lindrick | Yorkshire | Great Britain 7½, USA 4½ |
| 1961 | Royal Lytham and St Annes | Lancashire | USA 14½, Great Britain 9½ |
| 1965 | Royal Birkdale | Lancashire | USA 19½, Great Britain 12½ |
| 1969 | Royal Birkdale | Lancashire | Tied 16-16 |
| 1977 | Royal Lytham and St Annes | Lancashire | USA 12½, Great Britain and Ireland 7½ |
| 1981 | Walton Heath | Surrey | USA 18½, Europe 9½ |
Counties are given as they were at the time of the matches. Lindrick lies on the border of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, and the two Southport-area courses are in what is now Merseyside.
The list reads as a history of the event's scale. The early venues were northern clubs with strong professional connections, and the 1929 and 1933 matches were both won by the home team. The two Royal courses on the Lancashire coast took over in the 1960s as the match grew, and each has its own page in this section: Royal Birkdale, where Jack Nicklaus conceded Tony Jacklin's putt in 1969, and Royal Lytham and St Annes. The 1981 match went to Walton Heath in Surrey, where what is often called the strongest American team ever assembled won by nine points.
Wentworth holds a place of its own. The 1953 match there was the closest the home side came between the war and Lindrick, and an informal match between British and American professionals had been played on the East Course in 1926, the year before the first official contest.
How the Brabazon is judged against the older English courses
Golf writers have never been kind to it, and the criticism is fair as far as it goes. The Brabazon lacks the natural ground of a Ganton or a Walton Heath. Its hazards were dug where a drawing said they should be. Several of its par fours are hard to tell apart a week after playing them.
The defence is that it was never trying to be Ganton. It was built to do a job that the great clubs could not do or did not want: to hold a large professional event in the centre of the country, with a hotel attached, on a course where the finish would produce a result. Judged on that brief it succeeded beyond anything its designers can have expected, because the four matches it staged included the three that turned the Ryder Cup from a formality into the contest it has been ever since.
That is the fairest way to see the place. The 10th and the 18th are two of the best match play holes in Britain, and they are surrounded by sixteen others that are sound, demanding and largely unmemorable. Golfers who go for the architecture are sometimes disappointed. Golfers who go to stand on the last tee and look at the carry Christy O'Connor faced rarely are.
There is more on the sport across the golf hub, and the full set of English guides is collected on the England page.