Courses
OUR PANEL
Joe Downes
Age: 28
Lives: Gravesend, Kent
Handicap: 16
Best moment: 42 points at Crail- the world’s 7th oldest club –
with my three mates. Bliss.
Richard Downes
Age: 57
Lives: Gravesend, Kent
Handicap: 20
Best moment: Finishing with four
pars on the Jubilee Course at St
Andrews and toasting it in the Jigger.David Larkby
Age: 28
Lives: Tooting, London
Handicap: 14
Best moment: A hole-in-one
during university team trials –
enjoyable until the bar!Chris Larkby
Age: 59
Lives: Colchester, Essex
Handicap: 16
Best moment: Playing the back
nine at Walton Heath in only three
over was a bit special.Would the revered links of
Royal Porthcawl prove a Welsh
wonder or woe for our fourball?
oyal Porthcawl was back in the
limelight this summer as it played
host to the Senior Open
Championship. Just as he had been at the
south Wales links three years earlier, German
master Bernhard Langer was again
triumphant, only this time his margin of victory
was just three shots over American Corey
Pavin, rather than the 13 it had been over
Colin Montgomerie in 2014.
The Brigend course is the pride of the
valleys and Wales and always prominently
features in any Top 100 Courses listings
whether national or international. After all, the
legendary layout has hosted most of golf’s
leading amateur and professional events
including the Amateur Championship (seventimes) and the Walker and Curtis Cups. For the
time being at least, The Open itself is a notable
exception.
The Porthcawl story started in 1891 when a
group of businessmen, involved in both coal
and shipping industries, decided to build a
nine-hole course but it wasn’t until a few years
later that Ramsay Hunter, a Scottish
greenkeeper who had earlier laid out Royal St
Georges, created south Wales’ first 18-hole
course. The rest, as they say, is history and in
1909 King Edward VII presented the club with
‘Royal’ status.
Clearly Bernhard Langer is a major admirer
of Porthcawl...but what did our fourball think
of the Welsh star when they visited on a
blustery late summer’s day?R