Sir Peter Allen decribes Hoylake aptly:
"I suppose there is no famous links which offers less encouragement to ther first glance of the visitor than Hoylake...
The view from the smoking room at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club on the first floor of that supremely plain Victorian clubhouse in red Ruabon brick shows a vast flat space, apparently without character or guile, bounded by some uninspired examples of later Victorian and Edwardian domestic architecture to the west;...
Don't be put off:the reality is greatly different. First of all this is a long, tough, supremely competent golf course, one of the toughest and most searching of the great links. You don't get away with anything; what's more, the great long pros don't make a fool of it either."
Jim Finegan had this to say about Hoylake:
"For most golfers, the old links at Hoylake is not a case of love at first sight. From the windows of the dignified red-brick Victorian clubhouse, the links, with roads and houses hemming it in on three sides, looks flat, open and sere and, alas, dull...
The course is almost always firm and fast, shortening it, yes, but playing hob with the tricky little shots around the green. Then there is the wind, which sweeps in from the sea uniterruptedly across this level tract, where there simply is no shelter from it. And finally, here at Hoylake we must face up to a circumstance that is without parallel on the great championship courses:INTERIOR boundaries. Signaled by the "cop," very low artificial embankments of turf, they pop up only three times, but when they do they strike terror into the hearts of the timid and can prove ruinous to the player tainted with hubris."
Finally, Tom Doak opined:
For those of you with a feeling for the history of English golf, Hoylake, as the home of the great champions John Ball and Harold Hilton, demands nothing less than a pilgrimage. For the rest it seems to separate the true lovers of links golf from those who only sort of understand it."
Ciao
Sean