Eastward Ho! is one of my very favorite places in the game. All such places share one common attribute: you don’t have to have your clubs in hand to be glad you are there. This epic course deserved a book but compressing something so spectacular into pages is no mean feat. Yet, Bill Healy accomplished that immense task with
The Golf Course at Eastward Ho!, a wonderful addition to any library.
At just over 6400 yards, Eastward Ho! was the kind of shorter course that seemingly was overlooked in the last half of the last century. Now, a series of excellent decisions and actions by the club over the past 15 years have catapulted it back into being recognized as one of the game’s magical spots. Mark Rowlinson shrewdly praised it in the 2008 edition of
The World Atlas of Golf and the course has only gotten better since. Eastward Ho! is the best it has ever been and Bill's labor of love methodically chronicles the course's evolution, decade by decade.
In 2005, I was honored to participate in a match to celebrate Keith Foster’s restoration work there. Pitted against Brad Faxon, it was requested that I play with hickories - a blatant attempt to tilt the odds in the favor of the local hero!
I obliged, knowing that I had my hands full. Alas, the tussle billed as 'The Cape's Duel in the Sun' never quite materialized. Technical issues developed in my normally fluid swing
and having lost every hole on the front nine, my signature late round charge never
quite materialized.
Oh well, the course and the game were the big winners that day!
About 5 years ago, Bill shared with me a wonderful, bound manuscript that focused on Fowler, the property and the holes themselves. What wasn't to like from an architecture junkie’s perspective?! The golf course was front and center, not Mavis beating Mabel in the club championship in 19XX or some such historical anecdote. At the time I didn't appreciate that he intended to press ahead and turn his substantial text into a 'coffee table' type book. Having combed through every scintilla of information that he could find about the course and its evolution, Bill then set about littering his findings with high quality color photographs, overheads, drawings, as well as black and white photos from times gone by. One of my very favorites is Fowler's famous plasticine model of Eastward Ho! - and it is included in the Feature Interview. Not a page is turned without another interesting bit of a golf architecture revealed.
A quick-playing course made bouncy-bounce by an ace green keeper is the very kind of golf that we should celebrate. Rankings aside, Eastward Ho! epitomizes in so many ways the best attributes of UK golf (wind swept, lay of the land design, intelligent features, not over done) that made it to North America. Bill's book highlights this and properly credits Herbert Fowler, who has always been short-shrifted by those that haven't delved into English golf. Darwin was a HUGE admirer. Admittedly, Fowler's work at Los Angeles CC wasn't indicative of what he accomplished at places like Walton Heath, Beau Desert, Delamere Forest and Westward Ho! Happily, he soared at Eastward Ho! which is important because the land was too exquisite to get it wrong. A poor routing would have fought the turbulent landforms. Instead, thanks to Fowler's masterful figure 8, the fairways here rival Paraparaumu, Moraine, Rock Creek, Cape Breton Highland and Cape Kidnappers for supreme playing interest.
As some of you know, one of Bill’s fellow members, Randy Van Sickle, posts regarding a church fundraising event held at Eastward Ho! each September. The GCA faithful have the opportunity to play there AND support a good cause. In a similar fashion, Bill's book is also available to non-members by calling the professional shop (the details of which are included in the interview). Don't miss out on the course or the book!
Here is the link:
http://golfclubatlas.com/feature-interview/feature-interview-with-bill-healy-md/Best,