Welcome to Course Notes, a new series on the courses worth remembering and the stories that made them that way. Think of these as the notes you’d jot in the margins of your yardage book.

In 1887, Scottish surgeon Laidlaw Purves discovered a stretch of rugged land in Sandwich and set out to build a course worthy of rivaling St. Andrews.

Seven years later, his vision was realized when the club hosted the first Open Championship held outside Scotland, a milestone followed by the granting of royal status in 1902.

Royal St. Mark’s stood in for Royal St. George’s in Goldfinger, where James Bond famously bested the title character in a match.

Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond novels, was Captain-elect of the club when he died of a heart attack in 1964. One of his final acts was having lunch in the clubhouse.

The third hole plays toward the lone tree on the property and is one of the only par threes on the Open rota without a bunker.

From the fourth tee, the mammoth bunker, one of the largest in championship golf, looms directly ahead, while the “Elysian Fields” open up on the other side.

While the Maiden template remains, defined by its distinctive two-tiered green, the original sixth hole once featured a completely blind tee shot played over the property’s largest dune.

Royal St. George’s is a co-host of the Halford Hewitt Cup, where teams of ten alumni from 64 English and Scottish public schools compete in what has been called “the greatest of all truly amateur tournaments.”

Before competition began at an Open Championship at Royal St. George’s in the 1920s, Walter Hagen famously “warmed up” by playing 18 holes at Royal Cinque Ports, Royal St. George’s, and Prince’s Golf Club, hopping the fences between courses to create his own 54-hole routing—all in a single day.

That legendary warmup is honored each year at Hagen’s Hoof, when golfers from the three clubs meet on the first tee at Royal Cinque Ports at 5:30 a.m. to play the same 54-hole route before sunset.