Royal St George's (pictures)

[Philip Gawith]

Well, the mighty Buda caravan swung into RSG yesterday. Today the good gents have been at Deal and are partaking as I write of a fine clubhouse dinner while some of us had to retire to earn a crust. The ROW team were leading after yesterday but lets hope the GB&I boys have fought back!

Anyway - we were blessed with a spectacular day at RSG. I have posted pictures on this course before but in the afternoon with wonderful light i could not stop myself snapping away again.

The strongest impression I took away from this visit was that the actual playable surface of a number of the greens was actually very small. A few examples would include 9, 11 and 15 ( a remarkably small green for a 490 yard hole). The overall size of some of these greens is reasonable (though not large considering the scale of the course) but they are dramatically reduced by severe slopes, run-offs etc.

Yesterday afternoon at RSG was one of those really special occasion that warms the golfing soul!

Here are a few snaps to savour. If you want commentary I refer you to Ran's excellent Oct 2007 Course review.



Approach to 2



A view of the short 3rd



The wonderful rolling 4th fairway



The tee shot on 5, with the green hidden in the distance behind the dunes



The 7th fairway with trademark coolling stations in the distance



Watching the world go by...



Mark Chaplin tees off 7 and Tiger Bernhardt admires..



The 8th green



The extraordinary 9th green from the side



Approach to 9 (i think!)



Another view of 10 - this time taken right from the bottom of the course.

more to follow....

[Philip Gawith]

The wonderful 10th



The 11th green



Tee shot on the hog's back 12th



Another view of 12



Do golf vistas get any better?



The 13th takes you back to the old clubhouse at Princes



The impossibly small 15th green - considering this is a 490 yard par 4.



The short 16th where you can revisit the Thomas Bjorn nemesis bunker



17



Fairway on 17



And here is 17 green
The

[Philip Gawith]

I could not resist posting one more picture of the 9th green

[Kalen Braley]

Phillip,

Great pics..thanks for sharing.  I must admit, when i 1st saw pics of St. George, I wasn't very impressed, but its been growing on me big time.

Kalen

[Derek Dirksen]

Thanks for posting the great photos.

[Kevin Pallier]

Philip

I love the pic with the chair overlooking the golf course....brings back some great memories...

[Scott Warren]

Phillip,

Great pics from a great day!! If only those wbankers hadn't cut our lunch short!

[JNC Lyon]

These pictures are very cool.  When one thinks of Sandwich, it is usually in regards the tee shot on 4, the 14th, and the 18th.  None of these were included in the pictures.  Subsequently, one can better appreciate the qualities of the other holes on the course.  RSG appears to be pure links golf, through and through.  I especially like the photos of the hog's back on number 12 and the horizon green at the 10th.  Why does the golf world not hear more about such holes?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Philip,

Those are GREAT pictures.

Does anyone know the answer to this question.

How do they keep weeds from growing in their tall grasses ?

Is it a climate or soil related immunity they enjoy or dedicated maintainance practices ?

[Jamie Barber]

Philip,

Those are GREAT pictures.

Does anyone know the answer to this question.

How do they keep weeds from growing in their tall grasses ?

Is it a climate or soil related immunity they enjoy or dedicated maintainance practices ?

They burn the rough periodically. This year it was burned back pretty aggressively later winter/early spring in prep for 2011

[Scott Warren]

Indeed. The right hand side of #1, where Tiger famously lost his opening drive, is about two inches long at present, as is the RHS of #18.

[Jamie Barber]

When I last played there (2008) it was about 3 feet!

[Michael Whitaker]

Philip - Thank you for posting the pics... great remembrance of our day there. As wonderful as they are, however, they cannot to justice to how BIG and BOLD the course really is. From the moment one steps on the first tee it is obvious that RSG is a CHAMPIONSHIP venue.

This is a GREAT course... as good as anything I have seen anywhere.

[Philip Gawith]

Thanks Pat. I don't know the technical answer to your question re weeds, but as mentioned by others, they have recently cut back the rough aggressively in various parts. They have done this not specifically because of weeds, but because it had become too thick - they hope that it will grow back more "whispy" next year.

[BCrosby]

Philip - Many thanks for the pictures. They bring back many happy memories.

Has any thought been given to allowing play from the old Maiden tees? Would that even be possible given the current lay-out?

Bob 

[Philip Gawith]

Bob, I don't think that would be possible given the current layout - I think the 5th and 6th holes have both changed a lot (there is a big mural just outside the showers that explains things!), but it would need a more expert source than me to answer this question definitively.

[Scott Warren]

Re: The Maiden -

From World Atlas of Golf:

"Significant modifications took place... including transforming the 5th from a one-shot hole of no great merit into a very fine dogleg-left par four... that led to the demise of the blind par three 6th - the feared Maiden hole, then played over the massive Maiden sand dune".

To the best of my knowledge, the Maiden dune is still there, left of the 6th green, and the 6th green is still in the same spot as it originally was, so in a macro sense it would be possible to tee a ball up at the site of the original 6th tee and play the original hole.

But on a micro level, the green site was likely altered since then (can't find my source material for that, but I recall reading the size, shape and bunkering of the green were altered when the tee was moved), so it wouldn't be exactly the same hole.

[John Mayhugh]

Phillip,

Great pics from a great day!! If only those wbankers hadn't cut our lunch short!

I think you had it right before the edit!

[John Mayhugh]

I was playing with Philip when he took most of these photos.  It was fun seeing how many of the same types of shots we took, though his certainly look better than mine.  I will post more when I manage to get everything labeled, but judging from recent history it may take a while.  For now, just a few:

The 6th is a par 3 of about 160 yards.  Don't want to be in that left bunker. 


Giles tried a shot I would never have dreamed of.  He did at least get the ball down into playable territory. 

[Scott Henderson]

Great pictures!

Would anyone else even try that shot?