Dr Alister MacKenzie’s Cavendish

I had the honour of being invited to play two wonderful, but very different, inland courses last week. Luffenham Heath  is an old favourite  and celebrates its centenary this year and  I was reminded of the beauty and the natural running nature of this Rutland heathland course.  Click here for a  short review.

The short 15th at Cavendish

The second course was the Cavendish, located at Buxton in the Derbyshire Dales, built for the Duke of Devonshire and designed by the much respected Dr Alister MacKenzie of Alwoodley, Moortown (excellent development underway here in design and agronomy under the Master Greenkeeper Steve Robinson), Cypress Point, Royal Melbourne and Augusta fame.

I was invited by a group of golfers connected via the Golf Club Atlas website, a most enjoyable and knowledgeable community of golfers, including Richard Atherton, the historian of Cavendish and a committee member of the Alister MacKenzie Society.

It is not often these days that I play my own ball round 36 holes in a day but the brilliance of MacKenzie’s design, extending to a mere 5720 yards across undulating ground and close to moorland, was so exceptional that I needed an afternoon round to fully appreciate it (once I had discovered in the morning the best line of play) and enjoy the wonderful condition of its presentation once again.

The rumbustuous Cavendish 18th

Of particular moment are the three short holes of less than 140 yards including the classic MacKenzie false-fronted green at the 116 yard fifteenth. Tom Doak, the American golf architect responsible for ‘The Renaissance’, next to Muirfield, goes into rhapsodies over the tenth hole understandably and the eighteenth provides a unique, extraordinary and audacious finish.

Ben Stephens remarked that the shorter holes have undulating greens while the long approaches are predominantly to flat greens. This was a very interesting aspect and provided a necessary defence as, despite much good drainage work being done to the greens in this very wet part of England, the greens are perhaps inevitably  high in meadow grass (poa annua) and unfortunately very receptive. Their ‘rough’ appearance is apparently due to ‘etoliation’ or stringiness or ‘ghost grass’  that tends to hide the fact that the greens are being overseeded with browntop bent and fescues by the able greenkeeper.

Put this design on a dry, firm, fine turf and it would be outstanding in its challenge. The target-style greens run well but unfortunately they reduce this course to a simple matter of straightness and distance control and so, reluctantly, it will not be appearing in the 200 finest courses in the British Isles identified on this website.

While talking of Alister MacKenzie, I have just started reading a book by him published just before his death in the early thirties called