I moved to London in September 2015 and the first time that I left the city after that was in December of that year, when I flew out of Gatwick Airport. The train to Gatwick goes through East Croydon, which is a pretty dismal place to most Brits, but for me it was exciting because that’s where the Addington is. I’ve been intrigued by the Addington since I first read about it in Tom Doak’s Confidential Guide some 15 years earlier. He made it sound very quirky, very English eccentric…completely unlike any course with which I had experience playing golf in the US. The par is less than 70, there are blind shots, crossover holes, etc. Plus there were several holes, like the twelfth and the thirteenth, which looked unique and spectacular.
So the following spring when I started my quest to play all of the golf courses worth playing within a few hours’ train ride of London, the Addington was one of my first stops. What surprised me most about the Addington was actually how not-quirky it was. It’s a really strong test of golf. It was also my first realization that par less-than-70 doesn’t mean that the course is really any shorter or easier. The Addington is 6,300 yards and par 69 from the back tees but it plays as long and as challenging as any 6,800 yard course with which I’m familiar. Later, when I played Rye, Swinley Forest, and West Sussex, I learned that this wasn’t a fluke. These courses—all of which are under 6,500 yards—are plenty long and strong enough to challenge all but the longest hitters (Rye might be the most difficult course that I’ve played). These courses all have at least five par 3s and in each case, 2 or 3 that make you hit long clubs.
The Addington has six par 3s from the wedge-postage stamp 120 yard eleventh up to the mighty 240 yard thirteenth and everything in between. I think that there’s more variety in these par 3s than on any other course that I’ve played. It’s certainly on my short list of courses with the best set of par 3s. The par three par 5s and the par 4s have similar variety. The Addington’s first great strength is its almost flawless composition—I don’t think that I’ve played a course with such a perfect mix of hole lengths. If nothing else, at least this should appeal to American golfers, who see ‘it makes you use all the clubs in the bag’ as a major virtue of a golf course.
But there’s a downside—of every course that I played in the UK, the Addington was most in need of tree removal. Actually, it was probably the only course that needed serious tree removal—the heathland clubs have been pretty good about tree management. But some of the holes, especially the aforementioned twelfth and the great sixteenth needed it badly. Fortunately, the new team of Mikes Clayton, DeVries, and Frank Pont is on the job. Pont has done an excellent job with restoration work on some of the other London clubs, including Camberley Heath and Tandridge and although I didn’t see them before their restorations, I’m pretty sure that neither had anywhere near the potential of the Addington. By the time of my last visit in summer 2018, the Addington had cleared out trees between the claustrophobic eighth and the ninth and the results were impressive. If they give the rest of the course that kind of treatment, the Addington should challenge for a spot as one of London’s top 5 heathland courses.
Apart from its inherent potential, another reason to restore the Addington is that it’s one of the few remaining examples of the work of architect J.F. Abercromby. He ran the club in its early days and was apparently a bit of an autocrat. But hey, Germany, Japan, and China all experienced their economic miracles under autocracy. His other notable courses are Coombe Hill (which I haven’t played), Knole Park, and Worplesdon and while there’s certainly a debate to have about it now, I don’t think that there’s any question that properly restored, the Addington would be the best of the bunch. I love Knole Park and Worplesdon but they wouldn’t have anything to match the drama of a properly restored twelfth or sixteenth hole at the Addington.
The Addington starts with quirk rather than drama: a short, uphill par 3. This wasn’t originally the first hole because the clubhouse was supposed to be up the hill behind the green. While I don’t think it’s the best kind of starting hole, it’s a very good par 3, with a deep but narrow green.
So the following spring when I started my quest to play all of the golf courses worth playing within a few hours’ train ride of London, the Addington was one of my first stops. What surprised me most about the Addington was actually how not-quirky it was. It’s a really strong test of golf. It was also my first realization that par less-than-70 doesn’t mean that the course is really any shorter or easier. The Addington is 6,300 yards and par 69 from the back tees but it plays as long and as challenging as any 6,800 yard course with which I’m familiar. Later, when I played Rye, Swinley Forest, and West Sussex, I learned that this wasn’t a fluke. These courses—all of which are under 6,500 yards—are plenty long and strong enough to challenge all but the longest hitters (Rye might be the most difficult course that I’ve played). These courses all have at least five par 3s and in each case, 2 or 3 that make you hit long clubs.
The Addington has six par 3s from the wedge-postage stamp 120 yard eleventh up to the mighty 240 yard thirteenth and everything in between. I think that there’s more variety in these par 3s than on any other course that I’ve played. It’s certainly on my short list of courses with the best set of par 3s. The par three par 5s and the par 4s have similar variety. The Addington’s first great strength is its almost flawless composition—I don’t think that I’ve played a course with such a perfect mix of hole lengths. If nothing else, at least this should appeal to American golfers, who see ‘it makes you use all the clubs in the bag’ as a major virtue of a golf course.
But there’s a downside—of every course that I played in the UK, the Addington was most in need of tree removal. Actually, it was probably the only course that needed serious tree removal—the heathland clubs have been pretty good about tree management. But some of the holes, especially the aforementioned twelfth and the great sixteenth needed it badly. Fortunately, the new team of Mikes Clayton, DeVries, and Frank Pont is on the job. Pont has done an excellent job with restoration work on some of the other London clubs, including Camberley Heath and Tandridge and although I didn’t see them before their restorations, I’m pretty sure that neither had anywhere near the potential of the Addington. By the time of my last visit in summer 2018, the Addington had cleared out trees between the claustrophobic eighth and the ninth and the results were impressive. If they give the rest of the course that kind of treatment, the Addington should challenge for a spot as one of London’s top 5 heathland courses.
Apart from its inherent potential, another reason to restore the Addington is that it’s one of the few remaining examples of the work of architect J.F. Abercromby. He ran the club in its early days and was apparently a bit of an autocrat. But hey, Germany, Japan, and China all experienced their economic miracles under autocracy. His other notable courses are Coombe Hill (which I haven’t played), Knole Park, and Worplesdon and while there’s certainly a debate to have about it now, I don’t think that there’s any question that properly restored, the Addington would be the best of the bunch. I love Knole Park and Worplesdon but they wouldn’t have anything to match the drama of a properly restored twelfth or sixteenth hole at the Addington.
The Addington starts with quirk rather than drama: a short, uphill par 3. This wasn’t originally the first hole because the clubhouse was supposed to be up the hill behind the green. While I don’t think it’s the best kind of starting hole, it’s a very good par 3, with a deep but narrow green.
The second hole is a long, tough par 5, doglegging to the right but with a fairway that slopes left. The Addington doesn’t have a ton of bunkers but those that it does have tend to be very well-placed. There’s one about 230 off the tee on the left to catch a pull or a straight drive that kicks left (and saves you from going in the woods) and another about 175 yards short of the green near the apex of the hill to mess with your second if you’ve hit a poor drive. The green is beautiful—it just sits there, sloping with the land off to the back left. The mowing lines around it could use some work, but that’s an easy fix.
We’re getting another lesson about English golf courses with the tough, uphill par 3 third: that English architects liked to use par 3s to climb hills. We’ll see this over and over again, especially as I start to review Colt’s London-area courses. While the exposed areas of the course were very firm (as you’ll see from the color of the fairways in some of my later pictures), this hole is surrounded by trees and was soft. That’s unfortunately because it’s really tough to carry the ball the 200 yards uphill onto this green and the hole could benefit from a firm approach. I’d imagine that a good number of these trees will be coming down in the restoration and the additional sun should help firm the ground up.
Four is the first of many tough, long par 4s on the Addington. This is probably the one hole where the trees are a net benefit. You want to aim at the end of the tree line near the green on the left side here. If you’re on the right side, you’ll have to shape your ball around the trees that encroach from the right. I hope that Clayton et al keep enough trees here to retain this ‘goal post effect’ on the approach because otherwise it’s just a straight-away par 4. Still, you could save two clumps of trees nearest the green and lose the rest.
The fifth is another strong par 4 that doglegs gently right-to-left back around the fourth. The bunker short-right is perfectly placed to mess with your second off a poor drive but like several other bunkers on the course, could use a bit of aesthetic enhancement.
The sixth is a short dogleg left which has one notable feature of which I didn’t get a picture: the pit bunker short-right of the green. You really shouldn’t be in here but if you hit a poor drive to the right and a weak approach, that’s where you might end up.
The short (~145 yard) par 3 seventh is a beauty, especially when the course is baked out and the heather is in bloom as in this photograph. The green sits in a manmade bowl…a bit of a forerunner to the 80s/90s American mound-surrounded courses (we’ll see more of this on some of Colt’s courses). Needless to say, it’s much less unattractive here.
If there were ever a question mark hole, it’s the Addington’s 400 yard eighth. The drive is straight uphill to a blind fairway, which doglegs left but slopes right. Many won’t even be able to reach the fairway. If you go more than about 220, the fairway narrows and runs down into the woods on both sides. The second demands accuracy too, especially in firm conditions like these. The cut down most of the trees on the right between my summer 2017 and 2018 visits so now you may not lose your ball if you hit it over there, but will have to play 50 yards blind uphill out of a valley.
The dogleg left ninth features two shots over the bridged ravines for which the Addington is famous. This hole played completely different on different visits to the Addington, the first of which was in April 2016 when the course was soft and the second two were in the summer when the course was…well, the color of the fairway in the first picture here tells you how the course was. The second ravine cuts the fairway off at about 250 on the left side and in April, I hit a nice 2-hybrid out there, it stuck in the fairway, and I had 150 yards. Straightforward.
I think I played this hole 5 or 6 times on my two summer visits…and I only managed to hit the fairway once, when I clubbed down to like a 6 iron. Several of those shots with my 4 iron were actually pretty good, but the fairway is convex and they all bounced through the fairway into the heather that separates this fairway from the tenth, Long story short…summer British fairways can make you look like a long drive champion or an idiot. I’m sure that Clayton et al will remove the little trees that the club has (‘have’ if you’re British…) planted between this and the tenth fairway.
I think I played this hole 5 or 6 times on my two summer visits…and I only managed to hit the fairway once, when I clubbed down to like a 6 iron. Several of those shots with my 4 iron were actually pretty good, but the fairway is convex and they all bounced through the fairway into the heather that separates this fairway from the tenth, Long story short…summer British fairways can make you look like a long drive champion or an idiot. I’m sure that Clayton et al will remove the little trees that the club has (‘have’ if you’re British…) planted between this and the tenth fairway.
The approach is beautiful (especially in summer with the tan grass and the heather in bloom) but the green is convex and quite tricky to hit.
I’d recommend going into the chute of trees behind the ninth green and playing the tenth from the back tee—otherwise you have to hook your drive around some pine trees. It’s a great driving hole from back there, about 220 to reach the upper part of the fairway. The second plays a bit longer than it seems. Again, the bunkers could use some work to match the visual drama of the course’s other elements.
One type of hole that I’ve definitely become less of a fan of over the years is the postage stamp par 3 surrounded by bunkers. It’s kind of an obvious thing to do and half the golfers will just go back-and-forth across the green from bunker to bunker. But the eleventh at the Addington might be my favorite of the type because the green is deep and the bunkers are at the front and back so that you don’t have to play a bunker shot into the shallowest aspect of the green with another on the other side.
So this is a big part of what you came for, the twelfth hole. Definitely one of the more famous holes of the British heathland courses and according to many people, one of the country’s great holes.
Not according to me. At least not in the summer of 2018. It starts with a blind where the fairway runs out at about 235 yards. In April, it was a simple long iron lay-up. But like the ninth, it was impossible in the summer. On my second visit, I played with some members who said that a lot of them just hit a driver to try to get to the bottom of the hole and if they lose the ball, oh well. Because you can lose your ball off a good lay up too as I found out.
This hole is famous for two things: (1) its majestic approach shot and (2) its tiered fairway. That aforementioned 235 yards is to the end of the main fairway. After that, the hole runs downhill but there are several tiers of fairway, almost like this were a par 3. Now this could be a perfectly functional oddity…if the ball could roll between the tiers. Instead, the slopes are covered with long grass and heather, so unless you get lucky and catch the steps or a spot where the grass is thin, you’ll get stuck on the hill between the tiers.
Now all that has a simple fix: just run a lawn mower over the heather and long grass. The justly famous approach shot is another matter. When you see old photographs of the course, none of the trees on the left were there. They make the 220 yard approach very awkward but they’re guilty of an even greater crime: if you have a look in the woods over there, you’ll see that the trees are growing on a bunch of mounds, just like those short of the green. Then you realize what this hole was originally about: the area left of the green was open and you could bank the ball off those mounds onto the green from the left. And this would have been a vital option in the summer when, free of trees, the ground was firm and fast because a shot to the right would run off down the (if those trees were removed) thirteenth. Simply put, I don’t think that there’s a hole in the world as much in need of tree removal as the twelfth at the Addington.
On top of all that, it’s one of the most interesting greens on the course. So while I don’t think that the version of the hole that I saw was very good, I’ve never seen a hole that had so much unfulfilled promise. If Clayton et al restore this hole the way that I suspect they will, it will be one of the greatest holes on a heathland course.
This hole is famous for two things: (1) its majestic approach shot and (2) its tiered fairway. That aforementioned 235 yards is to the end of the main fairway. After that, the hole runs downhill but there are several tiers of fairway, almost like this were a par 3. Now this could be a perfectly functional oddity…if the ball could roll between the tiers. Instead, the slopes are covered with long grass and heather, so unless you get lucky and catch the steps or a spot where the grass is thin, you’ll get stuck on the hill between the tiers.
Now all that has a simple fix: just run a lawn mower over the heather and long grass. The justly famous approach shot is another matter. When you see old photographs of the course, none of the trees on the left were there. They make the 220 yard approach very awkward but they’re guilty of an even greater crime: if you have a look in the woods over there, you’ll see that the trees are growing on a bunch of mounds, just like those short of the green. Then you realize what this hole was originally about: the area left of the green was open and you could bank the ball off those mounds onto the green from the left. And this would have been a vital option in the summer when, free of trees, the ground was firm and fast because a shot to the right would run off down the (if those trees were removed) thirteenth. Simply put, I don’t think that there’s a hole in the world as much in need of tree removal as the twelfth at the Addington.
On top of all that, it’s one of the most interesting greens on the course. So while I don’t think that the version of the hole that I saw was very good, I’ve never seen a hole that had so much unfulfilled promise. If Clayton et al restore this hole the way that I suspect they will, it will be one of the greatest holes on a heathland course.

If you're fortunate enough to have your drive end up where you should be trying to hit it, this is the view that you'll have. It's about 230 to the front and 200 to carry the heather-covered mounds short of the green from here. You can tell how much more attractive and interesting this shot would be if they mowed down all of the trees on the left. Maybe the single most ruined-by-trees shot that I've ever seen on a golf course.

As strange as the hole is when you're playing it, it looks even stranger when you look back down the fairway from the green. Hopefully your drive hits the steps and gets down onto one of the flats rather than getting stuck in the heather and long grass next to them. If there were ever a golf hole that expressed the concept of the 'English Eccentric,' this is it.
After all that, the next hole is…just one of the most famous long par 3s in the world. I have to admit to being not as big a fan of this hole as most seem to be. I like it when there’s ample room to run the ball onto a long par 3 and that’s pretty hard to do here because the slope up to the green is quite steep. One possibility would be to cut the trees down right of the green and maintain some of this slope as short grass, but while the trees weren’t there in the old photos that I’ve seen, it didn’t look like the hill was short grass. Some holes are just meant to be hard and I’m pretty sure that this was one of them.
On a clear day, you can see the London skyline in the background from the tee of the subtle, but excellent medium-short par 4 fourteenth. The genius here is in the slope of the fairway. While the drive is wide-open, unless you keep your ball tight up the left side, the slope will carry your ball off to the right onto the fifteenth hole. From there, you’ll have an uphill, blind shot over a bunker. If you keep your drive up the left as we see below, it’s a simple approach.
The fifteenth is another of the Addington’s tough long par 4s. The encroaching trees make the fairway look narrower than it is. It’s pretty wide open and you should take advantage of that by making your best trying-to-impress-the-trackman swing…because the second is quite uphill and plays long.
While the twelfth may be the hole that’s in most need of tree removal in the entire world, the short par 5 sixteenth is probably in the top 10 as well. I suspect that this would be one of the most visually spectacular holes in the world if they cut down all the trees because it plays in the same direction as number fourteen, so you’d see the London skyline, and the land is rolling and wild, with a green perched over a heather-filled ravine.
But unlike the twelfth, it was still an excellent hole in its 2018 suboptimal presentation. The drive is great—wide open on the right but if you hit out there, you won’t be able to reach the green in two and may even have an awkward lay up around trees. But you can also use the slope to sling a draw well down the fairway from where it’ll just be a mid-long iron into the green. That shot is currently claustrophobic, with the trees on the right really choking the last 200 yards of the hole out. I didn’t get a photo of it for some reason, but the shot from the lay up area to the green is a beauty.
N.B. there’s some interesting shaping in the trees to the left of driving zone which I suspect was a bunker. It’s certainly a good place for one, right at the corner of the dogleg. I asked the members that I played with if it had been one and they said no, but the trees in there are at least 50 years old so if I’m right, it probably hasn’t been a bunker since pre-WWII. I’m sure that Clayton et al will get to the bottom of this.
But unlike the twelfth, it was still an excellent hole in its 2018 suboptimal presentation. The drive is great—wide open on the right but if you hit out there, you won’t be able to reach the green in two and may even have an awkward lay up around trees. But you can also use the slope to sling a draw well down the fairway from where it’ll just be a mid-long iron into the green. That shot is currently claustrophobic, with the trees on the right really choking the last 200 yards of the hole out. I didn’t get a photo of it for some reason, but the shot from the lay up area to the green is a beauty.
N.B. there’s some interesting shaping in the trees to the left of driving zone which I suspect was a bunker. It’s certainly a good place for one, right at the corner of the dogleg. I asked the members that I played with if it had been one and they said no, but the trees in there are at least 50 years old so if I’m right, it probably hasn’t been a bunker since pre-WWII. I’m sure that Clayton et al will get to the bottom of this.
The seventeenth is a lovely medium-long par 3 with a nice bit of English quirk: you play over the sixteenth green. The bunkers short of the green are very attractive (a nice model for the rest of the bunkers) but the important thing to note is that they’re well short of the green. You’ve got a good 30 yards of fairway short that you can use to run the ball onto the green. This nicely balances the two other longer par 3s, nos. three and thirteen, which are both very exacting.
The long par 4 eighteenth isn’t one of the more interesting holes at the Addington but it’s a very good challenge. There’s a bunker on the left about 230 from the tips which, according to the members, catches quite a few balls. The fairway slopes right-to-left and I can imagine that it’d catch a lot of short hitters’ balls when it’s playing firm in the summer. The approach is to an elevated green and plays a good club uphill.
I played the Addington more than any other course during my three years in London: seven times in three visits. So I got to know the course pretty well. Despite the issues with the presentation, which are the most significant of any course that I played in the UK, it’s an excellent test of golf. The trees, slopes in the fairway, and, in the summer, the firmness make it a very stern test of driving. I guess that there’s some concern that some of this might be lost if they do a wholesale tree removal, but I’d imagine that Clayton et al will leave a few to keep some of the challenge. But I think the improvement in the aesthetics would be worth making it a bit easier off the tee. The Addington is a dramatic, hilly property and I suspect that it’d be one of the most visually spectacular courses in London (where there’s some good competition) if they opened up vistas across the course.