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THE course was one of the first designed by the Peter Alliss/Clive Clark partnership and is a feast for all the senses: voluptuous and dramatic is an apt description. Heavily wooded and undulating, with enticing contours, oodles of water and a good deal of lateral movement, it offers a red-blooded challenge, demands sound course management, an inventive short game and no little imagination.
The topography, as much as the design, dictates strategy, of course: some severe changes in elevation will have you scratching your head on club and shot selection and you’d best keep a weather eye open for the agua. There are several lakes and the meandering river keeps them nicely topped up. The greens are long and narrow, in the main and frequently laid side-on or head-on to present small targets, most with mounding or generous bunkering for nuisance value.
There have been some modifications, notably in the routing, since it was laid out 1989. The start and the finish are essentially unchanged, as is the master design, but those who recall the course will discover that some holes mid-round have been re-numbered and lengthened. Thus, the outer loop is now anti-clockwise; the inner clockwise. This eases the logistics of navigation in the necessary golf carts. An inventive touch: the scorecard carries an extra column that shows the time that should have elapsed at each green since you teed off. It indicates that the outward loop should take no more than 2 hours 10 minutes; the completed round no more than 4 hours 22 minutes. It’s an idea with merit…
Originally some 6,230 yards to standard scratch of 70, the lay-out has been extended to 6,500 yards via the introduction of championship tees. The course plays rather longer than this, though. Those contemplating strutting the tiger tees should approach them only after a proper breakfast or a hearty lunch, preferably including red meat. Do not take them lightly…
That said, a round here might prove the most fun you’ve had fully clothed in daylight. A chap could play this course every day for a week without succumbing to boredom and he’d find some new challenge each time. He’d need to play the course at least twice to appreciate the nuances and the various options in a masterpiece of golfing architecture. This is a classic of the genre.
Some of the holes, indeed, deserve wider acclaim: the par four 5th of 467 yards is a jewel. It’s a right-angled dog-leg, left to right, with bunkers on the inside elbow, trees down the length of the left side of the fairway and a lake guarding the approaches to a long narrow green surrounded by bunkers. A four here is akin to a birdie for most and you’ll need to nail the tee shot into position A to even consider it. Play for a bogey and hope for a single putt, is the alternative.
The 12th is a par five you’ll want to photograph, a dog-leg across a valley with trouble on both sides and the river running across the fairway in the green approaches. Play it smart, is sound advice: you won’t over-power this beauty even though it’s not much longer than the old par four maximum of 475 yards. Take a long iron or fairway wood off the tee and then lay-up. Card a five and smile!
Bewitching beauty aside, the course has a lovely tempo with several true three shotters and a couple of par fours that appear drivable but are fraught with danger. The 3rd, for instance is a straight-away hole that’s 600 yards from the back down a tree-lined fairway. Its name is Doolittle because this is where some scenes from the film of that name, starring Rex Harrison, were filmed. Compare it to the 8th which is barely 300 yards, and the 13th which is only 289 from the tiger tees. Easy peasy birdies, you’d think, but both can result in big numbers, as Tiger might say.
There’s a gorgeous set of par threes, the most striking being the 17th which is both scenically breathtaking and unique, a real heart throb. Unique? How about two greens and a set of tees for each? The latter are on a hill top; the former, edged by the river, snuggle among trees 120 feet below. The two greens are there simply for variety and play quite differently, with variable shot lines from their respective tees.
Like the nearby village, the finishing hole may be the prettiest in England and some way beyond. There’s trouble on both sides so the tee shot must be pin-point: a draw aimed at the big tree on the gentle bend would be perfect, leaving perhaps a mid-iron to a green with a narrow opening and surrounded by sand with a lake on the right. A lay-up in the rising green approaches is the shot, particularly if the flag is at the rear.
Take five and smile your way to the nearby 19th and order a bottle of bubbly to celebrate a perfect day. You’ll experience nothing quite like it – until you set out again on the morrow to do it all again… It's irresistible.
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