Golf Asia — January 2018

76 GOLF ASIA

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76 GOLF ASIA

W

e begin our Yorkshire golf

journey in the Leeds area,

well serviced with established

courses particularly the top-quality trio of

Alwoodley, Moortown and Moor Allerton.

Alwoodley Golf Club is a wonderfully

natural design with intelligent and varied

bunkering (80 of them in various shapes

and sizes) and was Alister MacKenzie’s

first layout in 1907. In later years the

internationally acclaimed golf architect

went on to design other famous courses

such as Royal Melbourne, Cypress Point

and Augusta National.

Originally known in the early days as

the ‘Sunningdale of the North’, Alwoodley

runs over natural heathland, so the

fairways are of springy turf cut through

heather, gorse and pockets of woodland.

Look out for the tricky par-4 10th - it’s a

classic risk and reward hole and rumour

has it that MacKenzie based the 13th at

Augusta National on this hole.

Alwoodley’s neighbour, Moortown

has always held a richly deserved

reputation as one of the country’s finest

championship layouts. Another course

designed by MacKenzie, Moortown is

laid out on 175 acres of dramatically

contrasting mainly level woodland and

moorland and hosted the first ever

Ryder Cup on European soil in 1929.

A bit further afield is Moor Allerton, the

first golf course designed in the country

by American golf course designer Robert

Trent Jones and is typical of his work

(His other courses include Spyglass Hill,

Hazeltine and Sotogrande). The Trent

Jones trademarks of shallow bunkers,

huge teeing grounds, lakes, sloping

fairways and large contoured greens (that

can get up to 13 on the stimpmeter during

A golfer heads for the

fairway after teeing

of at the 365-yard

par-four 12th at The

Alwoodley Golf Club.

A golfer crosses

over a gully at the

moorland layout of

Halifax Golf Club.

Moor Allerton Golf Club (near

Leeds) is the first course designed

in the UK by famous golf architect

Robert Trent Jones Snr.

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