Inevitably many courses have one nine that is perceived to be 'better' than the other. But how many courses have a terrible front nine followed by a superb back? Or vice versa?
Yesterday I played Mottram Hall, A De Vere Hotels course in Cheshire. Mugging up beforehand from Mark Rowlinson's 'Golf Courses of Cheshire' I should have been prepared; out of all the courses reviewed in his book, this is the only one where he simply glosses over half a course rather give a detailed hole by hole account.
I cannot describe the tedium, the dreariness, the almost total lack of features or interest in that front nine. Clearly neither could Mark! The intervening twenty years have done nothing to improve things. Had I not been playing with a friend who is a member there I would have walked in halfway round. Even the presentation was lousy, which surprised me for a corporate hotel venue. Think down at heel municipal. The only positives were the firm and (relatively) fast fairways and greens.
But then we walked to the tenth!
Suddenly things moved up not just one or two, but ten gears! There followed six or seven of the most glorious, uplifting golf holes I have ever played. Sweeping roller-coaster fairways though a forested landscape where trees rarely intrude on play but give a majestic backdrop to truly interesting, testing and strategic golf. The climax is reached at the 17th, as extaordinary a hole as you will find anywhere, before the golfer is dumped unloved on the same dull tract of land housing the front nine for the long sad trudge back along the 18th to the clubhouse.
Mottram Hall sets the bar for the most schizophrenic golf course. Can anybody better it?