Golf in England

England is probably too broad.  I can talk a little bit about golf at the Gog Magog golf course in Cambridge, so let's plunge on...

The Gogs is the nicest course in the Cambridge area, per my host, David.  I can't argue with that much as I didn't see another course.

The terrain is rolling and has more altitude variation that I am used to.  A couple of tee shots are straight down hill. 

There are no water hazards on the courses.  Yes, they have two.  The Old Course from 1900, the new course was done in the mid 80s.

The styles of the two courses are very close.  So close that I wouldn't have noticed that there was large difference in design, which I think one would expect over 80 some years of golf club design history.

The fairways are quite wide.  There are no trees commonly in play.  You have to hit it quite a bit off line for them to come into play.  Likewise the bramble bushes and plum trees.  You can nibble your way along the course, season permitting. 

There is some rough, but it was wispy when I was there.  I'm told it's different in different seasons.

The holes are quite long.  The par 4s are almost all in the 400 yard range.  There was one short hole of 320 or so.  There were also a couple near 450.  The par 3s are 170-ish.

No one in the group I played in could get to any of the par 4s.  So we played a lot of pitch and putt.

The course is modestly trapped, but generally there was room to run a ball on from the front of the greens.  My home course has some forced carries over bunkers to get to some pins.

The sand in the bunkers is very coarse.  More rock like than I am used to.  David says that the rains will drain the sand portion into the soils and constant maintenance is required.  I was in one and got out ok.  One could explode from them without too much trouble.

The ground under the course is called Chalk Downs.  This is quite porous and water and apparently sand will drain well.

A lot of the greens have some slope to them.  They also seemed to have a bit of grain. If you've played on bent grass, it is a lot that that.  But it didn't seem to come into play as much as bent.

The greens are pretty furry and I had trouble with the slow speed.  I was using an Anser Ping putter than was lighter than I am used to.  No excuse, mind you, but I was leaving everything short.

There is a bunker, on the 18th on the old course, where if you hit a ball in it, you are asked to toss in a pound into the Captain's Charity jar. 

Bottom line, long course, not much run out and slow greens proved too tough for me. 

It's an old fashioned club, so no blue jeans!  And no trainers in the club house or spikes!  And no track suits either.  So I spent some money to get some Under Armour pants at the outlet mall.  (It's trousers in the UK!)  They turned out to be very comfortable and I'm expecting to get some use out of them.

I also traveled with more shoes that I normally do.  The suitcase was stuffed with pair after pair. 

The club house was nice in that understated British way.  It looked fairly new, but there were plaques of names of the Captains going back to 1900 on the wall.

They had a large bar, sadly no real beer (see the beer blog), but several beers and lagers on tap.  The chips were good.  Other than that, not too much to say.

There was a nice practice area, but I think I talked about that already, so I won't repeat myself.

I would have liked to get in another round or two, but we ran out of time.

Thanks to David for sharing his club.