How could you not be inspired by this landscape? If the individual holes were ‘duds’ you might argue against the merit of St Georges, but they are not. In most cases – particularly on the front nine – they are exhilarating and interesting. So what if some American professional occasionally doesn’t get exactly the bounce he expects!
Bernard Darwin once wrote of Royal St Georges:
“One great characteristic – I think it is a beauty – of Sandwich, is the extraordinary solitude that surrounds the individual player. We wind about in the dells and hollows among the great hills, alone in the midst of a multitude, and hardly ever realise that there are others playing on the links until we meet them at luncheon . . . This is nearly as my idea of heaven as is to be attained on any earthly links.
With the turn at Sandwich the nature of the course begins to alter, and in place of doing threes – or per chance sevens – among the hills, we shall be travelling over the flatter ground in a series of steady fives, with, let us hope, an occasional four. There are plenty of footholes – better, perhaps, than some on the way out – but they do not make the same appeal to the imagination nor are they so characteristic.”
Mine is one vote that St Georges and The Old Course are a long way superior to the other courses on the rota.
(Photos from The Open website)
