While I arrived in London in September 2015, I didn’t start playing golf until February 2016 when I decided to take a short trip to the southeast coast to play a few dream courses, Royal St. George’s and Royal Cinque Ports. I enjoyed the experience so much that when I got back to London, I immediately started plotting which of the many great London heathland courses to play first. While almost all of these clubs are private, with a few exceptions, ‘private’ in the UK means the same as ‘semi-private’ in the US—a club that has members but is opened for limited public play.
So I went first for the what are supposed to be the best of the bunch: the two courses at Sunningdale Golf Club. Both courses consistently make a variety of world top 100 lists and the Old Course seems to be the pick of many as the best heathland course. I established a habit early on of playing at least 36 holes a day and while the days aren’t at their longest in early March, the courses were empty enough and golfers in the UK play fast enough (and readily let you play through if you’re faster) to get in 18 holes on the New before lunch and then turn around and easily get in 18 on the Old after lunch.
What’s a heathland course? This term seems to be getting thrown around a lot without being given a very clear definition. The term ‘heath’ come from the heath family of plants Ericaceae, which includes rhododendrons, mountain laurels, and heather. The common characteristic of this family is that most of the members are acid-loving and their presence is an indicator of acidic and often low-nutrient soil. ’Heathland’ is the acidic dry land in northern Europe where two species of heather, common heather (Calluna vulgaris) and bell heather (Erica cinerea) are common. Most crops grow poorly in these soils. But they usually make good land for golf as the soils are often light and sandy—good conditions for growing rye grass and fescue. So then a heathland course is a course on heathland, which the presence of heather and a few other plants (holly, chestnut, Scots pine) indicate. We don’t have heather in the US, but the soils at places like Sand Valley and Forest Dunes are similar and some of the indigenous plants on those courses are reasonably close analogues to heather—especially the unrelated beach heather at Sand Valley.
There’s been a lot of debate about which of the two courses at Sunningdale is superior and while the standard answer was always the Old, there seems to be more questioning this lately. While the Old Course was the work of Willie Park Jr. with significant renovations by Harry Colt, the New Course is Colt with revisions by Tom Simpson. I won’t go into the history of the course, which has been pored over on sites like Golf Club Atlas.
But after playing the New Course, you can tell which parts of the Old Course are Colt and which are Park Jr. Colt liked to site his greens into hillside and there’s a lot of almost modern shaping around them. I’ll get into this a bit more when I discuss the Old Course, but while I usually value architectural consistency, I preferred the mix of Colt’s complex green sites/shaping and Park Jr.’s more minimalist approach on the Old. And while I usually like blind shots and both courses have several of them, I found the New’s repeated blind drives to narrow fairways surrounded by heather (there are three in a row on the front nine) a bit excessive. Both are great golf courses, but in line with the old consensus, I prefer the Old.
The long par 4 first is a good, but tough hole. There’s ample room to drive the ball, but the best approach is from the high left side of the fairway. While it wasn’t difficult to stick a drive up this on this soft late winter day, you’d want to be careful about trying to place a drive up there in the summer because the further that you go, the more that the woods encroach on the left. In what’ll become a theme, the green is narrow, but deep and is a tough target for such a long par 4.
So I went first for the what are supposed to be the best of the bunch: the two courses at Sunningdale Golf Club. Both courses consistently make a variety of world top 100 lists and the Old Course seems to be the pick of many as the best heathland course. I established a habit early on of playing at least 36 holes a day and while the days aren’t at their longest in early March, the courses were empty enough and golfers in the UK play fast enough (and readily let you play through if you’re faster) to get in 18 holes on the New before lunch and then turn around and easily get in 18 on the Old after lunch.
What’s a heathland course? This term seems to be getting thrown around a lot without being given a very clear definition. The term ‘heath’ come from the heath family of plants Ericaceae, which includes rhododendrons, mountain laurels, and heather. The common characteristic of this family is that most of the members are acid-loving and their presence is an indicator of acidic and often low-nutrient soil. ’Heathland’ is the acidic dry land in northern Europe where two species of heather, common heather (Calluna vulgaris) and bell heather (Erica cinerea) are common. Most crops grow poorly in these soils. But they usually make good land for golf as the soils are often light and sandy—good conditions for growing rye grass and fescue. So then a heathland course is a course on heathland, which the presence of heather and a few other plants (holly, chestnut, Scots pine) indicate. We don’t have heather in the US, but the soils at places like Sand Valley and Forest Dunes are similar and some of the indigenous plants on those courses are reasonably close analogues to heather—especially the unrelated beach heather at Sand Valley.
There’s been a lot of debate about which of the two courses at Sunningdale is superior and while the standard answer was always the Old, there seems to be more questioning this lately. While the Old Course was the work of Willie Park Jr. with significant renovations by Harry Colt, the New Course is Colt with revisions by Tom Simpson. I won’t go into the history of the course, which has been pored over on sites like Golf Club Atlas.
But after playing the New Course, you can tell which parts of the Old Course are Colt and which are Park Jr. Colt liked to site his greens into hillside and there’s a lot of almost modern shaping around them. I’ll get into this a bit more when I discuss the Old Course, but while I usually value architectural consistency, I preferred the mix of Colt’s complex green sites/shaping and Park Jr.’s more minimalist approach on the Old. And while I usually like blind shots and both courses have several of them, I found the New’s repeated blind drives to narrow fairways surrounded by heather (there are three in a row on the front nine) a bit excessive. Both are great golf courses, but in line with the old consensus, I prefer the Old.
The long par 4 first is a good, but tough hole. There’s ample room to drive the ball, but the best approach is from the high left side of the fairway. While it wasn’t difficult to stick a drive up this on this soft late winter day, you’d want to be careful about trying to place a drive up there in the summer because the further that you go, the more that the woods encroach on the left. In what’ll become a theme, the green is narrow, but deep and is a tough target for such a long par 4.
Right is shorter but left leaves a better angle and flatter lie from the first tee on the New Course.
The angle to the green opens up here from the left.
Standing on the seventeenth green looking back down the first.
The par 3 second was my first introduction to what we might call a signature hole type for both Colt and English golf generally: the uphill par 3. This green is the first of several where we see Colt’s distinctive, almost modern shaping, with the green built up on a pad and framed by mounds. I prefer Colt’s occasional mounding to the more symmetric (and artificial looking) mounding of 80s and 90s architects, but Colt’s shaping around his green complexes definitely looks like an early predecessor to me.
The first of many uphill par 3s in the English heathlands.
The green pad of the second is built up from its surrounding and with mounds at the back, looks almost modern.
The medium-length par 4 third is our first serious introduction to heather. It’ll catch your drive if you try to cut too much off the right side here and as I learned a few holes later, you don’t want to be hitting out of it—especially on such a cold and wet day. The approach to the green is a beauty, with three staggered bunkers. And while Colt’s green contours tend to be pretty mild (that was another theme across his courses), this one was subtle but quite good—although it’s hard to tell in this picture.
The left rough actually leaves a pretty good angle from which to approach this back right pin on three.
Colt's greens are never too undulating but the third has some nice subtle breaks. The third fairway is on the left and the fifteenth goes off to the right.
The long par 4 fourth commences a three-hole stretch to which I can’t think of a clear superior. It starts with a long, gently right-doglegging par 4. To be sure, they could really use some tree clearing on the right side, especially off the tee. But the uphill approach to the green is excellent, giving ample room to run the ball onto the green while still requiring care to avoid the encroaching heather on the left.
It's a bit unnecessarily tight off the tee up the right side on four. This and the next few holes could use a lot of tree clearing to open up the heath is this more open section of the property.
Uphill to the excellent fourth green site. You'd be better off approaching from the right side of the fairway, but it's tough to get there with all the trees off the tee.
The short fifth is one of my favorite par 3s in England. The setting is lovely and the green is very challenging, with a spine running left to right across the middle creating a receptive front portion but requiring great control to any shot played to the back. Although they’re covered in heather, we can see in the third photo more of Colt’s mounding behind this green.
One of the great par 3s in England.
This spine coming in from the left side of the green makes back left pins hard to access.
One of Colt's mounds behind the fifth green. The heather helps it blend into the surrounding. The gorse adds a nice bit of color in an otherwise dreary time of year.
That brings us to the par 5 sixth, one of the most justly famous holes in England. The hole plays through a sea of heather and the views to the right over the open heath were stunning, even on this dreary day. There’s a strong argument to be made that the club should remove a lot of the trees on this and the other open heath holes although they are on commonly-owned land (the Chobham Common, a great place for hiking or walking your dog) and I’m not sure whether it has the right to do so.
This was also where I got my first experience hitting out of heather. The best analogy that I can think of—if you know American landscaping plants—is trying to hit out of a creeping juniper. Heather, especially when wet as on this day, is very tough and ropey. I tried to hit a 9-iron about 120 yards to lay up on my second but my club got tied up in the heather and the result looked like a shank that went about 80 yards into a creek.
This was also where I got my first experience hitting out of heather. The best analogy that I can think of—if you know American landscaping plants—is trying to hit out of a creeping juniper. Heather, especially when wet as on this day, is very tough and ropey. I tried to hit a 9-iron about 120 yards to lay up on my second but my club got tied up in the heather and the result looked like a shank that went about 80 yards into a creek.
If not fairway then heather of the tee on the magnificent par 5 sixth. I'd vote to lose the trees in the right rough, but I'm not sure that it's up to the club.
While my shot was naive and incompetent, the aforementioned creek is an important part of what makes this hole interesting as it cuts into the fairway about 125 yards short of the green and forms a diagonal hazard up the right side of the lay up area. There isn’t much need to challenge it if you’re laying up because the left side of the fairway is higher and flatter, but it’s a good hazard for those who go for this elevated, two-tiered green and don’t have the distance to carry it all the way.
Approaching the hilltop sixth green. If you drive it in the heather, you might follow me into the marshy crap right of the fairway (and heather still grows in wet areas...).
From behind the two tiered green, we can see that there's a bit more room on the high left side when approaching the green and that it's a good place to lay up.
The medium-length par 4 seventh begins a stretch of three holes of which I wasn’t such a fan. Each features a blind drive to a narrow fairway. The landing area on seven bends to the right and it’s easy to run through the fairway on the left (as I learned). The green is on a diagonal from front-left to back-right and is protected by a bunker on its right side. Although I really liked the shaping around the green, I wasn’t a huge fan of the fact that the optimal angle into is is from the heather left of the fairway (hey, at least I left myself the optimal angle on my drive…).
The drive on seven is semi-blind and the landing area is narrow and bends to the right..
The best angle into the seventh green is from the left heather, where you're at least partially blocked by trees.
While the eighth is also blind and doglegs to the right, the fairway is a bit wider. The approach is uphill to another deep, narrow green built into the side of a hill, a Colt specialty (although this might be a Simpson green?).
Uphill to the narrow but bunkerless sixth green.
The long par 4 ninth is another up-and-over blind drive and while this time the fairway runs straight, it’s also quite narrow between a heather-covered hill on the left and pines/heather on the right. It’d be nice if the club could remove some of the pines on the right side of the fairway on the approach to the green because the optimal angle to the green should be from the right side of the fairway and the trees partially block this line.
A very tough, blind, up-and-over drive to a narrow fairway in the cold rain.
The approach to the green from well back in the fairway. Some of the pines on the right could go.
The weather was becoming pretty dismal by the time that I reached the tee on the long par 3 tenth. Fortunately there was a halfway house with a hot cup of coffee and a nice sausage roll behind the green. In Colt’s original routing of the New Course, the ninth hole finished well to the left of the current tenth tee and the tenth tee was on the hill to the left, playing down to this green. I bet that the hole would make more sense from up there because from these tees, it’s a very long (~220 yards) shot to the most well-bunkered green on the course with no room to run the ball onto the green.
It's especially tough to play an all-carry 215 yard par 3 when your hands are wet and freezing.
The current tenth plays from right to left in the top-center of this frame (the ninth green is top right). Originally the ninth hole played up to somewhere in the bottom of this frame and the tenth played down the hill through the clearing left of the current green.
Eleven is a bit disconcerting as the landing area is wide but you can’t see any of it. The fairway winds to the left and a good line for most good players is just to the inside of the trees—it’s about a 215 yard carry to the green on this line. Long hitters can just go over them and leave themselves a little wedge. I loved the simplicity of this green but not that while it just sits on the land (and slopes front-to-back with it), Colt still built a lot of little mounds around it.
A good driver can go over the trees on the left.
The green sits simply on the flat land, but there's a bit of shaping to its sides.
From behind and right of the eleventh green, we can see the heather covered mounding on both sides of the green.
Twelve is a good driving hole, with heather running diagonally up the left side. I don’t think that there’s much reason to challenge the left side though because the hole is fairly short and center-right leaves a better angle. The green is another Colt special, benched into a right-to-left sloping hill with heather covering the slope on the low side.
A very classic heathland look off the tee on twelve.
As many Colt green, the twelfth is built into a steep slope. Unlike many, the low side here is completely covered by heather. Best to hedge a bit short and right.
Thirteen is the course’s longest par 5, about 560 yards from the back tees. The drive is downhill to one of the more generous fairways on the course but the most interesting thing about this hole is the bunker in the center of the fairway about 115 yards short of the green. It’s one of the better-placed centerline bunkers that I’ve seen. The green complex is minimalist for this course and is best approached from the left side of the fairway.
Thirteen features one of the New's more generous fairways. The bunker is only about 185 yards out from the tips.
The centerline bunker in the lay up area is both well-placed and attractive.
I found the 190 yard par 3 fourteenth with mounds framing the back of the green to be a very modern-looking par 3.
The medium-long par 4 fifteenth is a very interesting hole, semi-blind off the tee to a fairway that runs diagonally from left to right with a pond in the corner of the dogleg on the left side. While a bit awkward, I found this to be an excellent driving hole and one of the better uses of water as a driving hazard that I’ve seen. There’s plenty of room to play left of it, but this makes the uphill approach to another narrow/deep green longer and more difficult. This is one green where the shaping around the green was a bit too modern-looking for my liking, although it blends in well with the surroundings from the fairway.
You can see the pond just short and right of the guys in the fairway. The closer you play to it, the easier the uphill approach. It's about 225 from the daily tees or 250 from the tips to carry.
The approach from just past the pond.
The shaping to the right of the fifteenth green looks like it belongs on a much newer (i.e. 80s) course.
The last three holes on the New Course are pretty disappointing. They start with a medium-length par 4 that doglegs gently to the right. I do like the bunkering on the approach to the green and the diagonal pattern that starts well short of the green is something that we’ll see more on the Colt holes next door and especially at St. George’s Hill.
The diagonal bunkers on the approach to the green are a hallmark of a Colt course.
The par 3 seventeenth, with its built-up green and mounds at the back, reminded me of a nice course in Michigan. I didn't find the two par 3s on the back nine to be a strength of the New Course.
The seventeenth is a nice par 3, but not a standout.
The eight is a short-but-tight par 5. In fact, the opening and closing holes of both the New and Old Courses are crammed into a corridor that was tight enough to require a fence of the left side of this tee (you can kind of see it in this picture) to prevent those on the eighteenth tee of the Old Course from getting whacked (definitely the only thing about Sunningdale that reminded me of a local muni). Although I didn’t much care for the hole, there’s no denying that the bunkering and shaping around the green are very well done.
Even without leaves on the oaks down the right, the eighteenth drive is very narrow.
The attractively bunkered uphill approach.
The New Course is a very tough test of golf, especially off the tee. It might be the toughest driving course that I played during my time in the UK. There are a lot of blind tee shots, the heather is thicker here than most of the other heathland courses, and there are a lot of encroaching trees. Coupled with the narrow, well-defended greens, I found this to be one of the most difficult of the heathland courses. I wish that they’d lose some trees especially on the holes around the turn because (1) it would open up the dramatic heathland landscape and (2) would help distinguish New from the more wooded Old. I’m not sure about how much work they can do on common land. What the course really needs—although the residents in the surrounding multi-million £ homes wouldn’t like it—is a good fire to restore the open heath.
While it’s undeniable that the New has some great holes (esp. 4-6), I was left wondering a bit what everyone thinks is so special about it. Maybe I need a few more trips around in drier, more pleasant conditions. The New reminds me a bit of Crystal Downs in northern Michigan in that the front nine is excellent with several world class holes, but the back nine is a bit of a letdown. I liked 10, 12, 13, and especially 15 but with the exception of maybe the latter, none struck me as a great hole. And I don’t believe that I’m the first person to note that the finishing stretch is a bit of a disappointment.
But while I’m skeptical that this is a world top 100 course, I haven’t played enough of them to render any kind of judgment on that. I can decide the question ‘is this an excellent golf course?’ And my answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ Until they restore the Addington, it’d be one of my top 5 London heathland courses. I didn’t feel that it had as many great holes as Colt’s nearby Swinley Forest or St. George’s Hill, but the best holes here are as good as anything on those.
Even if it’s a bit much once or twice, I liked Colt’s shaping. Of all of the different architects’ courses that I played in the UK (Fowler, Braid, Park Jr., etc.), you can most see the future of shaping in Colt’s work. He wasn’t afraid to move dirt, building up and shaping the edges of his green complexes to blend them in with their surroundings. While 80s and 90s American architects got completely carried away with this, there’s sometimes reason to do a lot of shaping around greens. When you want to build greens into hillsides as Colt liked to do, you need to do a good amount of shaping to (1) make them playable and then (2) make them blend into their surroundings. While we’ll see, I think, even better examples of this next door and at St. George’s Hill, Colt’s style is on full display here and marries well with the stunning heathland landscape.
While it’s undeniable that the New has some great holes (esp. 4-6), I was left wondering a bit what everyone thinks is so special about it. Maybe I need a few more trips around in drier, more pleasant conditions. The New reminds me a bit of Crystal Downs in northern Michigan in that the front nine is excellent with several world class holes, but the back nine is a bit of a letdown. I liked 10, 12, 13, and especially 15 but with the exception of maybe the latter, none struck me as a great hole. And I don’t believe that I’m the first person to note that the finishing stretch is a bit of a disappointment.
But while I’m skeptical that this is a world top 100 course, I haven’t played enough of them to render any kind of judgment on that. I can decide the question ‘is this an excellent golf course?’ And my answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ Until they restore the Addington, it’d be one of my top 5 London heathland courses. I didn’t feel that it had as many great holes as Colt’s nearby Swinley Forest or St. George’s Hill, but the best holes here are as good as anything on those.
Even if it’s a bit much once or twice, I liked Colt’s shaping. Of all of the different architects’ courses that I played in the UK (Fowler, Braid, Park Jr., etc.), you can most see the future of shaping in Colt’s work. He wasn’t afraid to move dirt, building up and shaping the edges of his green complexes to blend them in with their surroundings. While 80s and 90s American architects got completely carried away with this, there’s sometimes reason to do a lot of shaping around greens. When you want to build greens into hillsides as Colt liked to do, you need to do a good amount of shaping to (1) make them playable and then (2) make them blend into their surroundings. While we’ll see, I think, even better examples of this next door and at St. George’s Hill, Colt’s style is on full display here and marries well with the stunning heathland landscape.
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