Hoylake stages Open after 39-year break

The Open Championship will return to Hoylake for the first tie in nearly 40 years when the Royal Liverpool Golf Club hosts the event from 20 to 23 July 2006, the Royal and Ancient Club has announced.

The Open was last played there in 1967, when Roberto de Vicenzo of Argentina won his only major. Since then the increasing demands on infrastructure, space and traffic management have prevented the course from staging the event. The R & A has now acquired 10 acres of land next door and intends to build a practice ground on the municipal course owned by Wirral Council.

Peter Dawson, the secretary of the R & A, said: "Royal Liverpool is a club with a long and distinguished history. It is right that Royal Liverpool, which is justly regarded as one of Britain's outstanding links, will again be put to the test by the world's top golfers."

* The course designer David McLay Kidd has been selected to create the additional public course at St Andrews. The 34-year-old helped to design the acclaimed Bandon Dunes in Oregon, in the United States, which has been chosen to host the 2007 US Mid-Amateur, and the new heathland course, Queenwood, in Surrey.