British Courses 13

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Reddish Vale

This is a little-celebrated Mackenzie course dating from 1912.  It's in a rather dilapidated suburb of Stockport, itself a satellite of Manchester.  In fact it is so close to Manchester Airport (by car, that is) that you could be on the first tee within fifteen minutes of emerging from customs and immigration.  It is not quite as Mackenzie left it, the 10th hole having been taken out of play by a landslip on an adjacent disused railway line.  For some reason the old 17th was abandoned and a rather incongruous riverside hole inserted in its place.  The 18th is a long slog uphill and Mackenzie terraced the fairway.  That has now been flattened out into a continuous drag. The course measures 6086 yards with a par of 69, made up of an outward half of 2770 yards par 33 (four par 3s and a single par 5) and inward of 3316 yards par 36 (one each of pars 3 and 5).  I suspect the original 17th was also a long par 3, prompting someone to try to squeeze another par 4 in, which they have done, but it is not a good hole.  

These photos date from 1991, a very early morning round, starting out at 6.30 am and paying the green fee as I finished at 8.30, having played two or three balls on every hole.  My eclectic score was....no, even with three balls it wasn't remarkable!  Green fees very reasonable (weekday under £30) for a course so close to the centre of a major city (8 miles?).  The only problem is vandalism and theft.  Try not to take your own car.  Anybody who wants to play it is welcome to contact me.  If I'm free I'll drop you off there and pick you up later.

I'm trying Photobucket as a host, but I've had a few problems, so the post will come in two parts, the remainder via Mystic.


1st 421 yards par 4.  The urban surroundings are plainly visible, but already the course has style with a long carry over low ground to find the green.  


3rd 390 yards par 4.  The early holes are on high ground up by the clubhouse.  Again there is a gully to be cleared on the approach.


6th 240 yards par 3.  You descend to the lower ground in one swoop with this mammoth par 3.  (The fairway in the background is the 18th, slogging up the hill.)  Not only is it played to a green backed by the River Tame (I am on the back edge of the green), but there are 6 bunkers to trap the wayward and timid.


9th 137 yards par 3.  This is the view from the tee, the tiny green at the top of a steep rise, yet it is perfectly possible to deduce where the pin is.  More (hopefully) will be revealed on the next post.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Reddish Vale continued


9th.  This is the view looking back from the green.  I promise that that is one of my balls, but you are correct to deduce that the other two didn't make it!


9th.  As you can see, Stockport is no architectural masterpiece.


13th 456 yards par 4.  I am standing on the bank over which the approach shot is played (ordinarily a very long shot).  The green is tiny, triangular and there is a big drop on the right.  It is one of two formidable par 4s on the back nine.


13th.  This slightly different angle just manages to reveal that the putting surface is certainly not flat.


14th 340 yards par 4.  The photo is taken from the everyday tee, showing the compulsory carry over the river and trees as well as the bunkers in the corner of the dogleg.  Big hitters can also drift left ibto the river as it arcs round.


16th 322 yards par 4.  This is a lovely hole with a drive to an ever-narrowinf fairway closing in as it curves gently to the right following the meanderings of the river.  The pitch is made to this green which is situated on a promontory where the river makes a 180-degree turn, so there is water just off the putting surface to the left, right and through the back.  Most of the trees are on the far bank.


16th green from a little nearer.  There is a shallow bunker, as if the river were not problem enough!


18th 353 yards par 4.  This is a real thrombosis hill, climbing remorselessly right up to the front edge of the putting surface.  Downhill putts are to be avoided on this green.

[Neil Regan]

Mark,

  An example to show how a picture can be saved with a smaller memory size, and suffer little noticable loss of quality.

  Below is your picture on the left, which uses 220K of space at Photobucket. On the right, I have resized it to 25K.
  Doing this will allow you to have many more pictures at sites like Photobucket, and can prevent those sites from automatically re-sizing the memory and sometimes shrinking the dimensions of your pictures.

220K                                                                                                                                             25k


1st 421 yards par 4.  The urban surroundings are plainly visible, but already the course has style with a long carry over low ground to find the green. [/color]

[Brent Hutto]

I've a simple question about Reddish Vale. Is this a really difficult and tricky golf course or did Mark just choose to post photos from the most scary-looking angles? Some of these pictures look like there's nothing to aim at.

Mark labels the 13th as "formidable Par 4" and the green complex would be tricky if it were on a 350 yard hole, much less 450+ yards.

The tee shot on the 14th looks like something a Musgrove Mills member might love.

The 6th green must be bigger than it appears if it has to receive at 240-yard tee shot.

This looks like one of those courses where everyone plays match play and a double-digit handicapper would be silly to try and grind out a medal score every time he plays. Looks pretty cool in an out-of-breath, take an extra sleeve of balls kind of way.

[Philip Gawith]

Brent  - I played Reddish Vale about six months ago. It is quite a difficult course - certainly the 13th is every bit as difficult as it looks. If you hit your best ever drive and then can draw a 3 iron over a hill to a blind green - well, that's all you have to do! The 6th green is pretty small considering the length of the hole. Although it is deemed the "signature" hole, it is pretty goofy on account of the extreme elevation drop which makes distance a bit of a lottery.

[Tom_Doak]

Brent:

I went to see Reddish Vale five summers ago.  There are a half-dozen pretty difficult shots in the round per Mark's pictures, enough to provide some kick to the course, but as it's only 6100 yards par 69 you would not characterize the whole course as "difficult".  But that climb back up the 18th hole is a killer.

[Bill Wernecke Jr]

How far is it from Lytham etc?

[Brent Hutto]

I've never been there but Reddish Vale is just outside Manchester which is an hour or so from Liverpool. Probably a bit more than that to get all the way up to Lytham but it's my understanding that you can get from the Manchester airport to any of the courses on that stretch of coast in under two hours. Sounds like you could spend several vacations in that part of England and not run out of interesting courses.

[Bill Wernecke Jr]

And how far is Alwoodley from Lytham etc?

[SPDB]

  Below is your picture on the left, which uses 220K of space at Photobucket. On the right, I have resized it to 25K.
220K                                                                                                                                             25k

Neil -
Huh? It looks like the one pic (not two), and when I click on the properties it says it is a 213K size.

[ForkaB]

Brent:

I went to see Reddish Vale five summers ago.  There are a half-dozen pretty difficult shots in the round per Mark's pictures, enough to provide some kick to the course, but as it's only 6100 yards par 69 you would not characterize the whole course as "difficult".  But that climb back up the 18th hole is a killer.

Tom

You must be smoking the exhaust of your increasingly rarefied group of clients!

I haven't seen or played Reddish Vale, but I know Brora (also 6100 yards from the tips and par 69) and it still can kick the butts of the best players in the North of Scotland, even when the wind is not blowing.

Why can't modern designers build 6100 yard courses that are not only fun to play for all levels of golfer but also challenging (might I even say "difficult"?) for elite players?  And, please, let's not blame the clients.  A great artist will convince a client what he needs, not what the client wants, and at the end the client will be ecstatic!

[Brent Hutto]

Rich,

From what I can see of the thirteenth at Reddish Vale, any golf club I know of in my neck of the woods would take one look and send the architect packing if he wanted to put a hole with that sort of green complex in their course. That approach shot would be seen as unfair and frankly just beyond the pale for most US golfers.

Now I'm sure there are more adventurous golfers that the guys I hang around with all the time who might love to hire an architect to build them a quirky masterpiece of some kind but for most clubs there's a whole list of (implicit) restrictions on what makes a fair and playable golf course. I think the American attitude is that making a course longer is a good way to keep a course from being "too easy" while most of the elements that make shorter courses like Brora, etc. difficult are seen as either "too hard" or oddball features. Or something like that.

[ForkaB]

Brent

What's "wrong" with 13?  From the pictures and the words it tells me that even if you drive the ball well it is going to be a very difficult 2nd shot, but so what!  Ever heard of the "Road Hole?"

You miss, you chip or pitch on and take your 5 (or 4 or 6 or other).  For the great majority of golfers, 5 is a good score on any hole, much less one that tough to "par".

Rich

BTW

Brora's "difficulty"is all down to design subtelty and our inability to execute, rather than any freakish elements.  Even a 15 handicap would fancy their chances of shooting in the low 70's there, but very, very few of them do.

Other American golfers will eventually figure this out too, once their thick skulls have been penetrated......