Golf Course History

Golf Illustrated (USA), 1915 April Vol. 3, Issue 1, pgs. 27, 48-50 (part of article "Our Foreign Letter by Bernard Darwin")

"The work of the golfing architect has come very nearly to a standstill since the war began. I have not heard of a single new course being opened. However, one is to be opened and that rather an important one on the twentieth of this month when Vardon, Braid, Duncan and Willy Watt will play at Woodcote Park near Epsom. Watt, who is to be the professional then, is one of the best of our young generation of players and I should add that early in the war he tried to join the army, but could not do so, as I understand, on account of some physical weakness.

This course at Woodcote marks something of a new departure since it is to be the country and golfing home of a London Club, namely the Royal Automobile Club. The R. A. C. is a vast and imposing gray building on the south side of Pall Mall, with restaurants and swimming baths and racquet courts and heaven alone knows how many members—a gigantic caravanserie in some ways rather more like an hotel, if one may respectfully say so, than a club. In Woodcote it possesses a pretty, undulating park and a typical, solid English country house for its club-house.

The course has been laid out by Mr. Herbert Fowler and his partner Mr. Simpson and they have done a difficult piece of work well. There is one rather novel point about the course in that it consists of three rounds of nine holes. Many clubs have an eighteen holes and a nine holes—a main course and a relief course—but here the three circuits of nine holes, which all begin and end near the club-house, are separate and individual entities. The player will be able to choose his eighteen for himself, ringing the changes as pleases him best.

Another rather interesting point about the course is the ingenious way in which the architects have, as far as possible, overcome the difficulties of a hilly country. It is obviously very difficult to make good putting greens upon steep slopes. When golfing architecture was in its infancy the delightfully simple plan was adopted of rolling and mowing a patch on the side of a slope and letting the putter get out of his awkward predicament as best he could. If he found himself at the top of the slope, he had nothing to do but hit his ball to the bottom and then, having at the sacrifice of a stroke, obtained a strategic position, begin his assault on the hole. The next step was to build projections, in the nature of gun-platforms out of the side of the hill, having a sheer drop on one side and a back-wall on the other, which made for fairer but still very dull and monotonous play. The gun-platform difficulty can never wholly be got over, but it has been overcome as far as is humanly possible at Woodcote. So many and such skilful undultions have been made in the greens that there are no abrupt walls and precipices and each green has a distinctive character of its own. I never saw so many silk purses—of different patterns too—made out of something very like sow's ears.

I imagine that this course might perhaps have been opened before, had it not been for the war. The last time I saw it which was in the autumn, it appeared to be in very good order and it was curious to see all those verdant and waving putting greens and bunkers full of fresh golden sand solitary and apparently derelict, the only sound there being the distant shouting of military commands and the persistent hammer, hammer of the building of military huts. These huts run along one side of the course and belong to the Public School and University Corps which is one of the innumerable new battalions of Kitchener's Army and is attached to the Royal Fusiliers. That was before the men had got their uniforms and they gave to pretty old-fashioned Epsom the appearance of an University town. Hundreds of young men in old Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers or gray flannel trousers, bearing the hall-mark of university or public school, strolling about arm in arm, took the onlooker straight back in imagination to the High at Oxford or Kings Parade at Cambridge. A great deal has happened since then: the men have long been in uniform; they are approaching rapidly the finished stage and are dying to get out to the front. Perhaps they might have got there already but for the fact that a corps, raised from such sources, provides a ready made gold mine of officers. So of all those young gentlemen who in the beginning joined the ranks so eagerly as privates, a very large number have gained commissions as officers in other regiments. Their places in the ranks have been filled up again and P. S. V., or to call them by their football battle-cry the "Ups," will no doubt give a good account of themselves when they get the chance. It was only a few days ago that I met a friend of mine who was away from Epsom on a day or two's leave spent on being innoculated. The normally shaven upper lip of the barrister boasted a fierce, bristling little moustache and he looked very red and brown and said he had never felt half so fit in his life. He had been digging and clearing ground and cutting trees and though he is nearing the limit of military age he had enjoyed all the hard manual work amazingly. He had read nothing at all for four months, for he had felt so deliriously weary and comatose in the evening that he could scarcely keep his pipe alight. Altogether he was in contented frame of mind and body, having only one desire unfulfilled, to get to Flanders."