I played at Woking today, with course manager Andy Ewence and consulting architect Tim Lobb. It was the first time I had been in perhaps four years, so I hadn't seen most of the work Sean references -- large scale tree removal, heather regeneration and green expansion.
It's a triumph, and the work that is starting this winter is going to make it more exciting still -- this is in competition with what is currently underway at Addington as the best news in British golf.
I'm going to write it up for January's GCA so can't share too much here. Suffice to say there's going to be a lot of shouts of 'TIMBER' at Woking this winter.
Woking really is turning a few corners. Tell the club to turn another corner and expand 6 green out to the water.
Ciao
There has been a lot of green expansion -- I particularly noticed it at the rear of the fifth. The greens, always large, are huge now. The seventeenth has been expanded too, though we spent several minutes discussing just how much it would have to grow or move to make the famous 'Johnny Low' bunker the fearsome in-green hazard of which Low writes. The stream has been remodelled (again) and now sports heather on the green side bank. It looks good, imo, but it's not expanding the green to the water.
The loss of the original J Low bunker on 17 is lamentable. Wouldn't the green have to spread in front of 18 tee to make that scheme work properly? Was 18 always a dogleg right or was the tee to the left of 17 green at some point? And if it was, is it worth sacrificing the dogleg on 18 to restore 17 green?
Ciao
The eighteenth tee used to be left of the green.
The problem with the seventeenth is that nobody knows exactly what it used to look like. I have spent hours and hours looking for a historic photo of the green and never found one.
I thought 18 tee was left of 17 green.
It would be hard to go back to a straight 18th rather than the cool dogleg around the heather and pond.
Ciao