The club was founded in 1911. The course, located in Southport, 20 kilometres north of the city center of Liverpool, England, is a links course, with all the holes being between and on mainly large dunes and local indigenous pinewoods, typical of the area. It is physically close to both the Royal Birkdale Golf Club, near its south-western boundaries, and to the Southport and Ainsdale Golf Club.[1][2]
Each team consisted of 6 players, playing two rounds of stroke-play over two days, counting the five best scores each day for each team.
The eight best teams formed flight A, in knock-out match-play over the next three days. The teams were seeded based on their positions after the stroke play. The first placed team were drawn to play the quarter-final against the eight placed team, the second against the seventh, the third against the sixth and the fourth against the fifth. Teams were allowed to use six players during the team matches, selecting four of them in the two morning foursome games and five players in to the afternoon single games. Teams knocked out after the quarter-finals played one foursome game and four single games in each of their remaining matches. Games all square at the 18th hole were declared halved, if the team match was already decided.
The eight teams placed 9–16 in the qualification stroke-play formed flight B, to play similar knock-out play, with one foursome game and four single games in each match, to decide their final positions.
The four teams placed 17–20 formed flight C, to play each other in a round-robin system, with one foursome game and four single games in each match, to decide their final positions.
Host nation and eight-time-winners team England won the opening 36-hole competition, with a 16-under-par score of 704, two strokes ahead of team Wales on 2nd place. Neither four-times-champions Ireland, with 16-year-old future professional major winner Rory McIlroy in the team, or two-times-champions Sweden did make it to the quarter-finals, finishing tenth and eleventh respectively.[3]
Team England won the gold medal, earning their ninth title and first since 1991, beating team Germany in the final 6–1. The winning English team included 45-year-old Gary Wolstenholme and 16-year-old Oliver Fisher.[4]
Team Switzerland, for the first time on the podium, earned the bronze on third place, after beating France 5–2 in the bronze match.
^Mattsson, Peter (August 2005). "Tävling, Ju äldre desto bättre – eller?" [Competition, The Older, the better – or?]. Svensk Golf (in Swedish). No. 8. p. 112. Retrieved 5 May 2021.