... under Courses by Country and Architecture Timeline.
Piecing together how the tenets of good golf course architecture spread is endlessly fascinating. In that regard, Huntercombe represents a vital piece of the puzzle.
In the 1900/1901 time frame, greens found on inland courses remained unsophisticated. To enjoy the enhanced playing pleasure brought about by great green contours, you needed to play along either coast in Scotland, be it Machrihanish or Prestwick to the west or North Berwick and St. Andrews to the east. The Scot Willie Park Junior became the first to translate what he saw from these famous Scottish links to inland golf. Importantly, he did so in a manner harmonious with nature. His banner year of 1901 saw the opening of Sunningdale, Notts and Huntercombe and it is here at Huntercombe in particular that he enthused the greens with so much character and charm. Others including Paton, Alison, Abercromby, and Hutchison evidently liked what they saw as they joined Huntercombe and in turn spread a most appealing form of architecture themselves. Later, Longhurst picked up the torch and championed Huntercombe as the second best inland course in the UK behind only his beloved Mildenhall.
Located well to the west of London in Oxfordshire, Huntercombe has never quite captured the fancy of as many people as Sunningdale or Swinley or Walton Heath or other name courses in the famous heath belt closer around London. Even Bernard Darwin mysteriously only made glancing
references to Huntercombe in The Golf Courses of the British Isles. Why is that? Certainly, its relatively remote location makes it an outpost as opposed to feeding off being among a cluster of courses. Park found this out the hard way as Huntercombe never became the successful real estate development that he hoped.
Still, his design was immediately heralded by many as a major design accomplishment. While many courses cease being ‘famous’ as they are tinkered with or as time proves the limitations of their designs, that is emphatically NOT the case at Huntercombe. Save for tree growth, it is well preserved and it provides the best insight into Park as a designer as any course with which I am familiar. Just look at some of the fantastic green contours found in some of the photographs – they would be considered bold today but in 1901 they were groundbreaking.
In a piercing example of how design flowed south from Scotland, the influence of St. Andrews is found everywhere within this design from the number of central depressions/hollows to the interior green contours to the number of greens that run from front to back. When layered upon sandy loam like here, those three design attributes are probably the three most important ones to me personally. Indeed, courses replete with such features (St. Andrews, Oakmont, NGLA, Royal Melbourne) are in my personal top five. Of course, many courses in the US built from 1950-2000 went the opposite route. They had hazards to the sides of holes, greens that exchanged contour for speed, and 99.98% of the greens featured back to front slopes with staggering monotony.
As an aside, a tip of the hat to Tom MacWood. His Art & Architecture treatise on this web site was the first place that extolled to me the virtues (and importance) of Huntercombe. His piece remains as thought-provoking as ever and is a must read for those of us that like connecting the dots as to how intelligent architecture spread.
Have a read of both Tom’s work and this course profile and see if you don’t think Huntercombe is greatly under-appreciated as it is both historically important while remaining great fun to play to this very day. Like Westward Ho! which gathered glowing comments from all the great minds after Fowler’s re-work there, not much has changed at Huntercombe since Travis called it ‘easily the best laid out links that I have ever played over anywhere.’
Cheers,