Unfortunately, it is very badly managed and poorly maintained.
The greens are in an awful state, the fairways are so tight and close to each other that you need to buy a good insurance before playing there.
The booking system is a joke. When you call to book you are told to just turn up as there is no need to book. When you turn up there however, you are told that the course is fully booked and you have to wait for 2-3 hrs! although there doesn't seem to be many people at the first tee. My friends and I noticed that they are doing this consistently as if to feel important and to make you...feel previliged to get a round, or maybe just to make you spend hours on their ridiculous driving range (shortest you'd ever see in your life).
I used to play there to get a quick practice round but have decided enough is enough. Given the money they are charging they should do better and maybe hire someone competent to sort out the mess.
All in all, keep away from this course. Better alternatives: Richmond or Chiswick 9-hole.
HOME CLUB: ?
HANDICAP: 23
RELATIONSHIP: regular
The course is not physically demanding, it’s as flat as the Netherlands. And there is space to err on most of the fairways. You can usually play to the green from another fairway. But it’s no sucker, and demands the measure of my 18 handicap to get round in par.
Stray from plumb with your tee shot and there are some awkward little patches to cost you a swipe or two. There is also plenty of out-of-bounds and no few out–of-orders, too, with roads and a school running the length of several holes.
Water on the ninth is always a laugh. Latest evolutionary thinking says man probably evolved in freshwater pools, and not from the sea, (missing links?), and it is to this freshwater that a golfer’s fortunes are so often forced when playing the last of the nine. Wind is a factor; not least your own, I might add, as you become obsessed with MISSING the water, the length is not easy to judge, and there’s a brutal little surrounding hillock to make this hole a testy.
If it all becomes too much before you make it to the excellent facilities and Pro shop, you can play the first again. And if you don’t want to be escorted from the course by Men in White Coats, try not to rant and rave embarrassingly when the second shot veers violently to the left. It will be in the grounds of Springfield psychiatric hospital. And so could you be.
HOME CLUB: Central London
HANDICAP: 18
RELATIONSHIP: regular
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