This book gives the reader a glimpse of English history and its evolution of golf. Describes the author's adventures on English links courses, those humped-and-hollowed tracts that hug the sea.
From the Preface - written by the dean of English golf course architects and its most esteemed modern golf writer, Donald Steel.
English links golf (and links golf generally) could have had no more rejuvenating boost than the 2006 Open championship at Hoylake after which Tiger Woods observed euphorically, “The fast conditions allowed every player to be creative. It is how golf used to be played and how it should be played now.”
I am not holding my breath to see what impact Tiger’s words have in the United States and most of the rest of the world. The sad thing is that few golfers these days can recognise right from wrong. Too many courses are groomed to compensate for incompetence by heavy watering that deadens architectural strategy. Fast running courses are a far more potent force but this foreword for Robert Kroeger’s admirable book is frank and welcome acknowledgement that he is a stout defender of the faith.
Numerically, at least, England’s links exceed those in Scotland and Ireland and, geographically speaking, are more consistently located. If you work clockwise from Goswick, just south of Berwick-on-Tweed, and follow the coast, there is one gem after another. Curiously, the biggest gap is Yorkshire, the largest county of all. But golf is a lifelong voyage of discovery and I have no doubt that Robert Kroeger’s compilation of such a comprehensive list was as educational as it was pleasurable.
England can boast four current homes of the Open championship but the real delights are the journeys to out of the way spots where lesser staging grounds are to be found. You need to travel hopefully, with more than a whiff of perseverance, to find Seacroft, Brancaster, Rye, Hayling, West Cornwall at Lelant, St Enodoc, Saunton or Royal North Devon at Westward Ho!- the oldest of the English links- not forgetting Silloth which looks towards Scotland. However, that is all part of the fun.
Better known and accessible are the string of courses from Hoylake to Royal Lytham. Yet there is an enduring magic, a sense of timelessness and escape about all the courses that quickly turns converts into connoisseurs. There is hardly a landscape in the world into which a golf course has not been introduced but links represents the oldest and most traditional type, the precious raw material. Everything else is second best.
Donald Steel
International Golf Course Architect
President, English Golf Union, 2006
Chichester, England
Excerpt
PREFACE
They steal upon the sleeping mind while winter steals upon the landscape, sealing the inviting cups beneath sheets of ice, cloaking the contours of the fairway in snow.
- John Updike, Golf Dreams
The great writer John Updike plays golf in snowy Massachusetts and dreams about the game during the long winter season of New England. I also write about golf, though not at the level of an Updike, but I share his anticipation of the green grass of springtime during Januarys in Cincinnati. In fact, after having been bombarded last week by 16 inches of snow and ice, my memories of striking that little white sphere down the velvet fairway are become even dimmer.
But, the Cincinnati winter gives me a chance to recharge my batteries and plan my annual trip to the British Isles (or Ireland), which is usually as much fun as playing there. Writing letters, sending emails, and calling club secretaries to arrange matches with their members whets my appetite for competition on the links, those courses where rain water drains almost immediately and where play is almost never suspended, barring an 80 mph gale.
I write this book to give you, the reader, a chance to experience the links courses of England from my perspective and to learn about some courses that won’t be listed on any golf tour operator’s program but offer good golf and even better camaraderie. Yes, I may be prejudiced towards courses by the sea. Perhaps that’s because I live in a land-locked river town where my only contact with the ocean comes from watching a movie or reading a coffee-table golf book. Perhaps I wouldn’t be so keen on links courses if I lived near one and played there all the time.
Still, the smell of the salt in the air and the fresh, crisp breeze of the sea always invigorate me and make the experience of playing a links course special. The funky pot bunkers, humpty-dumpty fairways rippling in evening shadows, and the whins and tall fescue rough remind me of how golf was played centuries ago. Nothing fancy and little maintenance (the bunkers weren’t raked then, you know) made golf a more simple, a more pure sport in those days. The object was to get the ball in the hole in fewer strokes than your opponent. Each hole was a new game. John Low, a noted golfer of the late 1800s wrote in 1903 about the merits of match play in his book, Concerning Golf: “Golf is, from the nature of the game, a friendly affair … eighteen little games, eighteen new starts.” And indeed we are two friendly nations, even though America had to fight for its freedom from mother England only two centuries ago.
As some of you historians know, England has always been a world power. In the 17th and 18th century, this little country controlled a large part of the civilized world. She ended up giving independence to most of her controlled lands but not without leaving scars of repression in many countries, notably Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. So rumors abound that the English people still possess an arrogant superiority. However, after having played on over 60 English golf courses, with innumerable members of English golf clubs, I can emphatically state that I can’t remember one unpleasant English club member who acted snobbishly towards my friends or me. On the trip my friend and I took to Devon and Cornwall in 2001, we played matches with members at all clubs except one (Sorry, Mullion, but you did stand out!). Their hospitality towards us was simply outstanding.
Their speed of play, compared to the Scots, may be a little slow but their humor and camaraderie is every bit as good. I also felt a certain sense of brotherhood with these English lads, especially when playing Saunton and Royal North Devon. It was on those beaches that Americans trained with British military for the invasion of Normandy. Sixty percent of the men in those units died on the assault of German-occupied French beaches and their memories will never be forgotten. The American-built housing still remains adjacent to Royal North Devon, a reminder that our two countries fought together to rid the world of a tyrant. Furthermore, our best allies are England and Scotland and this partnership will be tested often enough in times of third world terrorism.
So, it’s with a sense of partnership and fraternal camaraderie that I write these pages. I hope that you enjoy reading them and that you gain insight into the wonderful opportunities awaiting you and your friends on the links of England.
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