The routing of Brancaster
The two excellent phototours from Sean Arble and James Boon of Brancaster both raise the question of the current course routing, and how much has changed over the past 124 years. The RWNGC’s centenary history by John K Coleridge
1892-1992 The Royal West Norfolk Golf Club – A Celebration of a Way of Golf –Is sufficiently rare not to be held in the Cambridge University Library (one of five copyright libraries here in the UK which are nominally supposed to hold everything published in this country), and so what follows is only provisional, pending a trip back to Brancaster itself later this autumn to consult at origin. To try and explain things I have used some standard secondary sources, plus some old family scorecards dating from when my paternal grandfather (who died in 1945) often used to spend the New Year holiday at Brancaster with some of his sons, staying in the old Dormy House in the village
http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw036774The current layout (6457 yards, par and SSS 71) dates from the mid-1980s, when the 13th was converted from a par-three of 193 yards, replete as I recall with one or two Rye-style sleepered eyebrows, into the excellent short par four with its exposed green that we play today: the old 13th green was slightly to the left of the current driving line. In addition, and has been widely commented, the angle of the teeshots at both the first and second holes has changed significantly with dune erosion (including the elimination during the 1990s of the old pillbox that used to stand sentinel) moving the tee progressively further right, reducing the perils of the first drive and rendering the big sleepered bunker en route to the second much less prominent.
However, as things stand, it is in fact only the first five holes, the current 8th to current 11th, and the last five that are played moreorless as was the case pre-war: significant coastal flooding in 1939 and wartime damage prompted the major routing shift Sean suspected in his profile, leading (
inter alia) to the loss of what Bernard Darwin thought one of the very greatest of short holes (the old 11th). In essence the first five holes were played as now, and the sixth was a par four of 355 yards, played up the current (seventh) fairway to the current (seventh) green from a tee much nearer the fifth green (and so in that context the ‘new’ sixth is indeed a filler hole, albeit an excellent and demanding one). The next four holes were as now, although forming the 7th to 10th rather than 8th to 11th. Three holes seaward of the current 11th then followed, and anybody who has looked out to sea over the boundary fence to the right of the 11th will realise what a mouth-watering prospect that must have been, with a celebrated short hole (as above), a long hole of 410 yards, and then a two-shotter of 335 yards bringing the golfer back to the vicinity of the current 14th tee.
GCA readers with access to Bernard Darwin’s
Golf Courses of Great Britain (1910, revised 1925) will realise already that this course differs quite a bit from the early layout Darwin describes, as it does from that pictured in Horace Hutchinson’s
British Golf Links (1897). Frank Pennink in his
Golfer’s Companion (1962) refers to ‘considerable changes’ being made by C.J.Hutchinson in 1928, and the current 12th with its odd bowl green being, ironically, one of the holes that Hutchinson had then eliminated.
If further enlightenment arrives I will, of course, pass it on. And apologies to all if somewhere in the GCA vaults are other notes and comments describing all of this already. Nonetheless I hope that the above at least partially explains some of the routing quirks that others have noticed at Brancaster, and the number of seemingly odd or obsolete teeing grounds that are visible around the links. Whatever, it’s still one of the best places in the world for a game of golf.