Three Courses at The Belfry, Plus Six You’ve Never Heard of

BIRMINGHAM IS WHERE we’re going now, leaving the sea behind at Burnham & Berrow and heading northeast to the Midlands. The M5 is our road, and a much-traveled highway it is (think of it as I-95 between New York and Philadelphia, with even more trucks). This drive from Somerset to The Belfry, ten miles north of Birmingham, in Wishaw, should take about two and a half hours.

As Nick Edmund put it in LINKS magazine, “To paraphrase Shakespeare: Some courses are born great, some achieve greatness, and others—like The Belfry’s Brabazon Course—have greatness thrust upon them.” The Ryder Cup has now been played here four times. Would this course ever have been the venue for the match if The Belfry were not the headquarters of the British PGA? No. And yet this eighteen, which has witnessed rather more than its share of high drama—Europe shocking the U.S., 16½-11½, in 1985; a stomach-churning tie in 1989; America squeaking by, 15-13, in 1993; and losing embarrassingly, 15½-12½, in 2002—is not dismissable. Now, thanks to revisions by one of its co-authors, Dave Thomas (Peter Alliss was his partner on the original design, 1977), this is a very good American-style parkland course.

I have tackled the Brabazon only once, in mid-July of 2001 with Bevan Tattersall, head greenkeeper at The Belfry. Bevan was then twenty-eight. He is six feet seven inches tall, trim and solid, red-haired, even-featured.

The Brabazon is flat; overall elevation change does not exceed fifteen feet. Because of mature trees that separate most of the holes from each other, the course is not open in aspect or feel; neither, however, is it claustrophobic. Bunkering is moderate—seventy-eight sand hazards of various shapes and sizes. The overriding feature of the course is water—streams, ponds, lagoons, lakes, you name it (I don’t think there’s a waterfall). It is quite possible to hit a shot into water on fifteen holes. And there are five holes where both the drive and the second shot can drown. Staying dry on this pleasant patch of England is not a matter of carrying an umbrella.

From the regular markers, the Brabazon measures 6,400 yards against a par of 72. The round over Bevan’s perfect turf begins with a straightaway two-shotter of 369 yards, followed by an intriguing 321-yarder that bends left around the trees to reveal a narrow green blockaded first by a stream, then by sand. The 501-yard 3rd (538 from the championship tees), also doglegging left, was the big news. The hole used to be a long, dull, straight par four; now it’s a very tempting risk/reward par five, with a lake at the left front of the green daring the big hitter to try getting home in two. There may not be anything original about Dave Thomas’s concept here, but the design is skillfully executed. After a long drive, Bevan, whose swing has tremendous arc, failed to get up on his 3-wood shot, the ball splashing short by ten feet.

The next six holes have little in the way of risk/reward options. It’s just risk, with water persistently giving pause, hole after hole after hole, and having to be hurdled at the green on the 4th, 8th, and 9th.

The 10th is unique, one of the world’s great short two-shotters. We played it at 284 yards. Running along the right side of the fairway is a lagoon, which tapers into a stream abutting this very shallow green. Trees along the water tend to complicate matters (a) on the drive for those courageous players going for the green from the tee, and (b) for the rest of us having to pitch our little wedges over the water to this curiously angled target with three bunkers behind it. In the Ryder Cup the hole has usually measured a mere 262 yards. You may want to try the same tee shot that the pros are encouraged to attempt; it’s about as much pure thrill as the game affords. This wonderful match-play hole is fraught with strategic considerations. In a 1993 Ryder Cup foursomes (alternate stroke), Ballesteros and Olazabal were 1 down to Kite and Love as the match came to the 10th tee. Ballesteros had the honor and, after noodling the options for what seemed an eternity, decided to lay up with a 4-iron. Then Kite, batting for the visitors, pulled out his 3-wood and fired a lifetime shot over the water to within four feet of the cup. Love holed the putt for an eagle and a 2-up lead, and the Americans went on to win the match, 2 and 1.

The 11th, 365 yards from the regular markers, reminded me that I had asked Bevan whether there was any hole that he thought was weak or humdrum or both. He said there was just one. The 11th is straight; bunkers pinch the landing area of the drive as well as the front of the green. After we putted out, I asked him, “Is that it?” “That’s it,” he conceded. “One of these days Dave Thomas will do something here, something to give the hole a bit of a spark, but what that might be I don’t know.”

I was particularly struck by the 14th, 166 yards, with its narrow green and very natural-looking eighty-yard-long bunker on the left that threatens to swallow even the slightest pull. It was also in the 1993 Ryder Cup that Faldo, all square with Azinger, here unfurled a perfect 6-iron—literally perfect—the ball landing about fifteen feet short of the flagstick and disappearing into the hole. Their match ended even.

The 18th is a terror, one of the game’s most dramatic finishing holes, with the opportunity for disaster accompanying us every foot of the way. Measuring 418 yards from the regular markers, 473 from the tips, it doglegs boldly left. Water imperils the drive and, even more harshly, the long second shot. There is no bailout area. Trees on the left bordering the lagoon are a serious consideration on the drive for the hitter hoping to cut the hole down to size. A large, flat bunker tight at the right of the tee shot landing area shuts the door there. The drive must be stung and it must be straight. The same applies to the second shot, which has to clear the lake and gain a narrow green, this one flanked by sand, triple-tiered, and nearly 200 feet deep. Some of the best shots in Ryder Cup history—for instance, Christy O’Connor Jr.’s 2-iron to three feet to beat Fred Couples in 1989—have been hit on this hole, a selection for The 500 World’s Greatest Golf Holes book.

The Belfry’s two other eighteens, also designed by Dave Thomas and Peter Alliss, are enjoyable if unexceptional. Like the Brabazon, both are routed over essentially level ground and both benefit aesthetically from the numerous beautiful trees (oak, silver birch, holly). Water threatens the shot five times on the Derby, four times on the PGA National. The Derby measures 6,009 yards against a par of 69. Most of us will find the PGA National to our liking at either 6,150 or 6,640 yards.

A full-fledged golf resort, The Belfry is big (324 accommodations) and bustling (twenty-one meeting rooms, eight bars, five restaurants, a nightclub, and more). The staff is knowledgeable and obliging, golf is accorded its proper spot in the overall scheme of things (the top spot), and the handsome period decor of The French Restaurant is actually surpassed by the outstanding cuisine, presentation, and service.

Roughly twenty minutes from The Belfry, in Sutton Coldfield, is Little Aston Golf Club. If The Belfry’s Brabazon was rather more than I had expected, Little Aston turned out to be somewhat less. And this I deeply regretted. Knowing how highly it has been regarded by British golf writers and course architects, I had long looked forward to playing it.

The club was founded in 1908. For a fee of ten guineas (about $60), Harry Vardon laid out the course in what is a beautiful woodland setting. His teasing crossbunkers—one thinks of the 3rd, 10th, 16th, and 18th—are an appealing feature of the design. The terrain is rolling, with an overall elevation change of about fifty-five feet. From the regular markers, the course measures 6,397 yards; par is 72. Over the years, Little Aston has hosted many important tournaments, including the English Amateur, the British Ladies, the English Ladies, and on a number of occasions, the Dunlop Masters.

When I played here in late summer of 2001, the secretary paired me with a stocky chap in his late sixties from the north of England. A 9 handicapper, he drove with a Callaway ERC II. He also used—and to good effect—a scandalously expensive putter, the first time I’d ever seen this weapon in the flesh. His golf bag was a very sturdy one and it rode on an even sturdier battery-powered trolley, which could probably have transported the owner himself in a pinch.

The 1st hole is a lovely opener, 382 yards long, steadily downhill, sand framing the tee-shot landing area, sand right and left at the green. The 2nd, 411 yards, comes right back up the hill, seven bunkers along the way, two more greenside, right and left. It plays at least 440 yards. It is sand that gives Little Aston much of its character. There are 101 pits by actual count, some of them deep, many of them with high, swoopingly contoured lips.

The 3rd is an irresistible down-and-up shortish par five, with one of those patented Vardon crossbunkers lurking on the hillside a hundred yards short of the green to snare the underhit second. Four is a level 312-yarder that must yield a lot of birdies, followed by a 150-yarder almost completely ringed by sand, the green perhaps a little too spacious, all things considered. And the 6th is a hard-nosed cousin of the 1st, also downhill, but more heavily bunkered, thirty yards longer, and altogether excellent.

The twelve remaining holes include a number of pretty medium-length par fours that drift gently down or up, that bend naturally right or left, but that rarely find the way to our memory bank. Little Aston occupies an ideal setting for the game, secluded, peaceful, beautiful old trees on the periphery of the property utterly shutting out the world; the graceful one-story clubhouse, with its gables and chimneys and generous windows, a sanctuary of calm and comfort, suggesting, in the warm simplicity of its appointments, the clubhouse at Swinley Forest. We are happy to be here, but it must be said there is a sameness to some of the golf holes and, equally to the point, a lack of distinction to some of them as well. We would welcome additional pulse-quickening moments, even an occasion or two when failure to execute the shot will find us face to face with a double or triple bogey. Little Aston is perhaps too considerate of our goodwill, too well-behaved.

A dozen or so miles northwest of Little Aston, in Staffordshire, lies Beau Desert Golf Club, on land that until the 1930s was part of the estate of the Marquess of Anglesey. The first Marquess, Henry William, earned his title and this land for services to England in the war against the French, specifically in the final defeat of Napoleon, at Waterloo, in 1815. The story has it that when Henry William’s leg was shattered by gunfire he cried out to the Duke of Wellington, “My God! I’ve lost my leg!” Glancing down, the Duke replied, “My God! So you have!”, then turned back to his telescope to observe the battle.

In 1912 the sixth Marquess retained Herbert Fowler to lay out a course here. It was intended for local golfers as much as for the Anglesey family. By early 1920 the Marquess was starting to divest himself of his Staffordshire properties. When he suggested that the local golfers take over the course, the Beau Desert Golf Club was formed. Ten years later, however, the ground on which the course was laid out was to be sold at auction. Two of the club’s directors were delegated to attend the sale with the aim of submitting the winning bid. But prior to the auction, both got a bit tipsy at lunch. When no one else was interested in buying the land, the pair, clearly intoxicated, wound up bidding against each other and thus boosting the knockdown price to £4,000. This was far more than the club could afford. Fortunately, the Marquess took pity and gave £2,000 back to the club.

Beau Desert is an admirably natural heathland course. Bunkering is light—there are only forty-two sand hazards, the majority of them small. Crossbunkers are common. Overall elevation change is more than 100 feet, and sometimes the ups and downs are steep. The green complexes are fascinating. In a 1974 report to the Committee, Fred Hawtree wrote: “There are a great many eccentric contours which lead to … approaches and putts that go beyond a spirit of adventure.” Today the greens still have plenty of interest, but they are no longer unruly.

Par is 70 on this 6,300-yard layout. On the opening hole, 304 yards long, we can pretty much take a 4 for granted but still get a kick out of launching our drive over a nineteenth-century gravel pit that is 100 yards wide and thirty feet deep. We take nothing for granted on the 2nd, one of seven long two-shotters. Starting from an elevated tee in the trees, it measures 458 yards, plays most of the way over level ground, and features a wicked crossbunker sixty-five yards short of the green. A couple of other par fours on the way out are also quite good—the 418-yard 5th, where we drive over a ravine into a hollow only to be faced now with a sternly uphill second shot that must clear a crossbunker fifty yards short of the green; and the 263-yard 9th, deliciously old-fashioned, plunging from a high tee, then climbing to a high green—unless you can play it knob to knob and drive the green!

The incoming nine also has its quota of good holes, beginning with the 10th, 142 yards, gently rising through the trees to traverse a deep semicircle of sand tight to the plateau green. The level 12th is another of the hefty par fours, 426 yards and a double dogleg, first curving right, then curving left, the green defended by a couple of pot bunkers at the left front, plus a low, rough-cloaked mound at the right front.

Like the opening hole, the closing hole offers a good birdie chance. A par five of only 480 yards, it runs downhill through the trees, encouraging us to go for the green lying below with our second shot. However, blockading the green, perhaps twenty-five yards out, is an impenetrable belt of gorse, effectively a wall of thorns. Still, we may well succumb to the temptation, if for no other reason than that the green is vast, more than 14,000 square feet. In fact, it is somewhat smaller than in the past, when it was thought to be the largest green in England, so immense that the man cutting it with a single-width hand-mower would walk 6,000 yards in the process, roughly the overall length of the course then.

New Hall, a luxury country house hotel not fifteen minutes from Little Aston and about forty minutes from Beau Desert, is superlative. Surrounded by a lily-filled moat and twenty-six acres of open parkland (a nine-hole pitch-and-putt course here), this is reputedly the oldest moated manor house in England, dating to 1200. Its sixty beautifully furnished accommodations include a number of suites. Cooking is of the highest standard, and it is Caroline Parkes, the proprietor, who personally places the dishes before the guests.

Queen Victoria, one story has it, so disliked gritty Birmingham that she had the blinds drawn when her train passed through. And if, even today, England’s second largest city is not noted for its aesthetic appeal, there are still a number of attractions in the metropolitan area that are well worth seeking out: the Victorian shopping arcades; the canals, a large network of artificial waterways that astonish us; the medieval town of Lichfield, with its ancient cathedral; the Museum of the Black Country, actually a restored village, including a coal mine; and, of course, not twenty miles south of the city, Stratford-upon-Avon.

About an hour’s drive northeast of Birmingham, in Leicestershire, outside Melton Mowbray, lies Stapleford Park, one of the finest country house hotels in the world. The handsome Victorian stables are a reminder that the Cottesmore Hunt used to assemble here. It is said that the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor) wished to buy Stapleford Park, but his mother vetoed it because of “the danger to his morals if he were freely exposed to the hunting set.”

The Stapleford Park estate encompasses 800 acres, more than enough room for a new course by Donald Steel and his partner Tom Mackenzie. This is the fourth course they have designed for the entrepreneurial golf club and golf resort developer Peter de Savary, best known for the Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle, Dornoch.

Woodlands, ponds, and streams all feature in this eighteen. There is a very natural feel and flow to the golf holes, in large measure because of the Steel/Mackenzie minimalist approach. They accepted the land as they found it.

The regular markers add up to 6,400 yards; par is 73. A six-hole stretch beginning at the par-four 7th—a lagoon on the right and a bunker on the left frame the tee shot landing area—puts pressure on the swing. On the 272-yard 8th, the snaking river Eye sets up options with varying degrees of drama: an open-the-shoulders driver over the water, aimed at the center of the green and having to carry 245 yards for sweet safety’s sake; the left-hand route, crossing the river twice, the second shot a very short pitch along the length of the green; and the third option, timidly driving right, which leaves a longer approach shot over a pair of bunkers to a shallow green. Great fun whichever way you go at it! The 168-yard 9th, its green sited on the diagonal and sloping from high right to low left, is followed by a 314-yarder played from an elevated tee down to a fairway flanked by beautiful old chestnut trees. A pond lurks at the left side of the angled green here. The 497-yard 11th is pure confrontation: out-of-bounds tight on the left the entire length of the hole, sand and a pond on the right at the landing area for our drive, and a stream across the front of the green eliminating any chance of a runup. As for the rising 410-yard 12th, the crossbunker twenty-five yards short of the green calls to mind Vardon at Little Aston and Fowler at Beau Desert. Despite the water hazards that pop up with some frequency, we play to our handicap at Stapleford Park, enjoying the round on a course designed to please rather than to punish, a course for gratifying holiday golf.

Setting aside such amenities here as the spa, the equestrian center, clay target shooting, and falconry, to say nothing of the gardens and the terraces and the captivating Capability Brown park, where sheep graze freely, there is, at the core of it all, the stately great house, dating to the sixteenth century. The public spaces—saloon, drawing room, library, billiards room, dining room (seventeenth-century carved plaster and woodwork by Grinling Gibbons)—are splendid yet warm. And the fifty-one spacious accommodations have each been fashioned by a different prominent figure in British interior design. As for the cooking, unfussy but imaginative, it measures up in every respect. In our experience, no luxury country house hotel in Britain and Ireland surpasses Stapleford Park, and only three or four are its peers.

The drive south, principally on the M1, to Woburn Golf & Country Club, in Bow Brickhill, at the northern end of Buckinghamshire, takes nearly two hours. In addition to golf, this American-style club offers tennis, squash, swimming, and skeet shooting. Three full-length eighteens—the Duke’s, the Duchess, and the Marquess—are carved out of forests of hardwoods and evergreens on rolling terrain. The youngest of the three, the Marquess, which debuted in June of 2000, is now the site of the British Masters. This tournament, which had regularly been played over the Duke’s, numbers among its winners Greg Norman, Lee Trevino, Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, and Ian Woosnam.

Designed by Peter Alliss, Clive Clark, Ross McMurray, and Alex Hay, the par-72 Marquess measures 6,329 yards from the regular markers. It moves through deep valleys and across high ground affording magnificent vistas over Bedfordshire as well as Buckinghamshire. The opening half-dozen holes are solid, but there is a sameness about the approach shots. Regardless of the length, which can be anything from 120 to 210 yards, the shot to the green is a falling one.

Now we arrive at the 509-yard 7th (538 from the tips). Here the tee shot is fired over a valley to a broad fairway split by a spinney of tall pines. The player hoping to reach the green in two must drive right of the pines and then, with an intrepid second shot, carry a wilderness valley and three deep pot bunkers in the slope leading up to the putting surface. Those of us taking the more cautious—and longer—route will drive left of the central trees. After a second shot along a narrow dipsy-doodle fairway, our third turns out to be an uphill pitch to a green sloping away to the right and with a steep falloff on that side. This 7th on the Marquess is a most uncommon hole: strategic, original, and great.

The 427-yard 9th is also marvelous stuff, one of the best holes on the course. The drive must be carefully positioned—neither left nor long. The second shot, perhaps a 5-metal, is struck from on high, across another deep valley, to a shelf green somewhat below us and carved out of the opposite slope. Oaks and rhododendrons create a beautiful backdrop for this putting surface, which is neatly angled to the line of flight and has a pair of deep bunkers under its right flank to snare the shot that just fails to get up.

Coming home there are many good holes, but it is the three shortest that we remember best. The thrilling 14th, 198 yards, is played from a very high tee down to a broad, two-tier green stoutly defended by sand, and the less thrilling but perhaps more demanding 17th, a level 155-yarder, requires the shot to be softly drawn around a large oak tree at the front of a richly contoured green if we are to have any chance of getting near a hole at the back or on the left. And then there is the 12th, at 270 yards the course’s shortest par four. The drive must first carry a pond and then avoid a narrow stream skirting the left side of the fairway. The approach shot, admittedly a very short pitch, must now carry this stream and a second pond, at the right front. If you think it all adds up to a lot of water for such a short hole, keep this in mind: Here at Woburn, where there are fifty-four holes of serious golf, the 12th on the Marquess is the only water hole!

The Duke’s Course, designed by Scottish-born Charles Lawrie, opened in 1976. In addition to serving as the site for the British Masters fourteen times, it was also used on nine occasions for the Women’s British Open, whose winners here include Patty Sheehan, Liselotte Neumann, and Karrie Webb. The Duke’s measures 6,554 yards from the regular markers against a par of 72. What gives this lightly bunkered layout character is the adroit use of trees in the tee-shot landing area and at the green. What detracts from the course’s appeal is the “backing and forthing” on 7 and 8, 10 and 11, 14 and 15.

Three consecutive holes on the first nine are outstanding. Selected as one of The 500 World’s Greatest Golf Holes, the 121-yard 3rd plummets 100 feet into a sea of rhododendron, bracken, and pine, with the green tilting so severely from back to front that too much bite on the shot will find the ball retreating into a deep swale of fairway. The 366-yard 4th rises all the way, curving left around a smooth shoulder of hill to a long, two-tier green, heavily bunkered, in a dell. Another dogleg left, the 5th is one of my favorite short par fives in Britain (and there are more than enough short par fives in Britain). To avoid a steep, rough-covered slope eating well into the line of play from the left, the drive must be kept right, into a constricted fairway. The second shot must also be shaded carefully right—but trees threaten here—if we are to carry a ravine that we have managed to skirt from the tee.

The Duchess, which opened in 1980, is also the handiwork of Charles Lawrie. From the regular tees it measures 6,442 yards; par is 72. Again, trees regularly prompt caution; sand only infrequently does. The agitated ground—dips and climbs and falloffs and cambers—lends test and pleasure to the round. We are struck by the challenging nature of three of the four short holes: the 2nd (182 yards, sand squeezing the narrow green, a high bank right and a falloff left); the unusual 7th (198 yards, big bunker right, a sharp ridge running diagonally across the hole from right to left and past the green on the left to ensure that any shot missing on that side kicks down into the trees); and the 13th (185 yards, a falloff on the left into the trees, and one lonely greenside bunker, short right).

There is a lot of good golf at Woburn, indeed, some of it very good, and all of it routed through beautiful woodlands with ideal elevation changes

Not ten minutes from the golf and country club is Woburn Abbey (“showplace of England” is how the Duke of Bedford immodestly advertises his home), a treasure trove of antiques, silver, porcelain, and paintings. Also on the estate are the Antiques Center, with more than fifty dealers, and the Woburn Safari Park, where many kinds of wild animals can be approached closely by car. I am not kidding when I say that a baboon would snatch the 6-iron out of your golf bag and test his swing if you were careless enough to leave the bag in the luggage rack on the roof of your car.