Happy returns and first encounters
As an avid course collector with a relentless appetite to play new designs, I keep a record of my golfing odysseys. In the two years before Covid, my tally was 90 and 86 a year, almost evenly split between returns and first-timers. In the following two years, those numbers dropped by about a quarter, although the ratio of old to new remained similar. One hurdle now is that I generally need to travel further afield to visit courses missing from my CV.
It is nonetheless a real treat to return to play some of the better local courses, as I did in early spring with a game at the London Club. This gives me the chance to better understand and appreciate the design, and there is no doubt the International course is a very strong layout kept in great condition, with a number of very memorable holes.
Having said that, I was still able to tick off a relatively local one new to me when Jeremy and I made an off-duty trip to the entertaining downland/parkland course at Willingdon in East Sussex. This is well worth a visit and has a couple of cracking short holes at the 4th and 5th.
Did you know?
Although individually they each helped to design many famous courses, J.H. Taylor and Alister Mackenzie also both have plenty of less well-known courses on their design CVS, such as Willingdon.