Golf has been a fixture at Littlestone since 1888. Although challenging enough to host the first L.G.U. Ladies Championship in 1894, the Club’s first Captain, William Laidlaw Purves, along with the professional David Herd, designed a course which covers much of the same ground as the links we now play. Purves was a member and the designer of Royal St Georges at Sandwich.

The new course was recognized as one of the premier links in the UK. Charles Blair Macdonald, a founder of the United States Golf Association, an evangelist for the game in the U.S. and the designer of many of the early, great courses in America, visited Great Britain in 1902 and again in 1904. He visited Littlestone, Prestwick, Hoylake, Deal, Sandwich and other well-regarded courses in the UK. What he saw at Littlestone inspired perhaps his finest hole on what has been called his finest course - the 4th hole at the Lido Golf Club. Macdonald said “The fourth hole at the Lido I consider the finest two-shot hole in the world of golf, but fully 90 per cent of golfers will have to play it as a three-shot hole. I absorbed the idea from the sixteenth hole at Littlestone…”

Via Littlestone GC