Royal St George’s

With such an illustrious history in both amateur and professional golf, it is delightful that Royal St George’s Golf Club goes about its business of setting the very highest standards and an ambition to be the finest of Clubs in a very English, reserved and understated manner.

The ‘Marketing men’ beloved of so many modern Clubs are nowhere to be seen; nevertheless, it would be surprising if the Club does not stage a magnificent Open this year. Perhaps the long tradition of ex-military Secretaries has something to do with this smoothly operated organisation.

Dr Laidlaw Purves

The Scotsman Dr Laidlaw Purves, who was also involved in setting up Littlestone GC and the Ladies Golfing Union, founded this London Club at Sandwich in 1887 with the help of some fellow members of Royal Wimbledon GC. He was a strong advocate for penal cross-hazards and critical of the new strategic design concepts pioneered by John Low, that accompanied the new rubber Haskell ball at the beginning of the 1900s.

With the re-design of the course over the years, much of the antequated quirkiness has gone but unpredictable bounces and some blind shots are still retained that annoy the modern professional!  And yet without the odd bounce or the excitement of scurrying over a dune to see where the ball has finished, where would FineGolf be?

Today the club remains a male members only, two-ball club (four-ball play was declared to have no standing after the 2nd World War) where dogs are allowed with the Secretary’s permission.

Thirteen Opens and thirteen Amateur championships have been played over these links, including the first Open to be played outside Scotland – in 1894 when won by J H Taylor – the first non-Scotsman to do so. It has hosted two Walker Cup matches plus many other important events, too many to mention.

Henry Cotton won The Open here in 1934, breaking an American run since 1923. One of Cotton’s rounds was a 65 with a Dunlop ball, thus giving rise to the renowned “Dunlop 65″ ball. In his qualifying rounds he scored 66 at Royal St George’s and 75 at Royal Cinque Ports which gives some credence to a sometimes expressed opinion that Deal is the more difficult of these two neighbours, or it was in those days.

Map of the course

The wealthy American Walter Hagen twice won Opens here, generously giving the winning cheque to his caddy in 1928!

The Club was accorded the right to its Royal title in 1902 and in 1931 the pleasantly gaudy members’ tie of bright green with a white stripe and two narrow red stripes either side was adopted and has been proudly worn ever since.

1938 was the year of the great storm when tents were uprooted during the Open and Henry Longhurst described it as the strongest wind he had ever known. Frank Pennick, an architect who had some influence on this course and the author of the “Golfers Companion”, the ancestor to this website, was at the height of his golfing prowess but incurred no less than four penalties for grounding his putter and causing the ball to move on the green.

My early golf teacher at Portmarnock, Harry Bradshaw, famously was said to have lost the Open here in 1949 by one stroke when he played his ball that had rolled inside a broken glass bottle on the fifth hole of his second round. It is less well known that he had the ‘luck of the Irish’ when having topped his ball on the fourteenth, it hit a stone and leapt over the Suez Canal in his last round!

Royal St George’s was in 1932 the first British golf course to install a fairway watering system which was updated in the 1970s. Perhaps this had something to do with the Club unfortunately giving in to the fashion for target-style greens for a period, with one member subsequently addressing a letter to the secretary at “Royal St George’s Park Golf Club”!

Let us hope that the course is presented with a dry firmness to properly test the professionals’ ‘running’ game skills in July. Of all The Open venues Sandwich has the lowest average rainfall and the need to resist tickling-up the greenness with fertiliser will be crucial.

1st Tee and clubhouse

After negotiating the quaint backstreets of Sandwich, one approaches this club up a long drive between flat marshy fields and a growing expectation of space and tranquillity is further enhanced by the long walk to the first tee with its famous pepper pot, thatched starter’s huts.

A number of people have influenced the course’s design but the routing has hardly changed, apart from at the sixth (Maiden), since first laid down in two loops of nine holes. The first nine used to be considerably shorter but, as a result of Frank Pennick’s changes in the 1970s, it is now more balanced and possesses fewer blind shots. The inevitable lengthening now sees it at over 7200 yards for the 2011 Open.

The first nine holes

A straightforward, though testing, opening hole has just enough room down the right to give a choice of avoiding the need to take on the cross bunkers with one’s approach. This hole saw Tiger Woods  lose his ball in thick rough to the right in 2003 and should remind one that, with few holes being adjacent to each other, if you spray your ball, you will not find it on another fairway.

Indeed ever since Freddie Tait of Luffness New GC, the public’s heart-throb, won the Amateur Championship in 1896, it has been called a “driver’s” course, though there are also a wide variety of second shots required.

Some will wish to take on the bunkers but there is no need at the shortish par four second hole to cut the dogleg corner, as the green, tilted back to front, will accept your short iron approach best from the flatness of the right of the fairway.

The par three third (Sahara) is the only par three possessing no bunkers on the entire Open Championship rota but here playing across the prevailing wind, is no easier for that.

The 4th drive

The fourth must be the iconic hole. It plays into the prevailing wind and the enormous, be-sleepered bunker threatening one’s drive requires firm nerves, as the approach to a green is best from the ‘Elysian fields’ on the right. It is so satisfying to get home over the enormous swale at the front of the green.

This green backs onto a row of fine houses, one of which is owned by a man to whom many golfers across the country owe a great debt for his behind-the-scenes administrative skills that still tends to spurn the computer. My early knowledge of Royal St George’s was derived from Halford Hewitt practice weekends in February which he organised.

The 5th drive

I wonder if many in July will follow John Daly’s example and risk going for the green at the fifth (416 yards) with a carry that must be over 300 yards. For the rest of us mere mortals, if the top shelf of the fairway is attained, then a great long iron, played through the uprights of the Maiden dune can be taken on and will really get your confidence going if the open green is gained. As the words of ‘The World Atlas of Golf’ suggest, the connection with nature that the golfer feels while playing the fifth is strong.

The sixth, nestling among high dunes, is picturesque and gives a natural amphitheatre for viewing, as does the ridge on the left of the dogleg par five seventh.

Dexter & Jonathan on the 8th

I have always liked the new eighth, very similar to the thirteenth at Hunstanton, both requiring an approach over rough scrubland and hillocks into the prevailing wind. The green is in a dell surrounded by low dunes and a bunker on either side. The green has been redesigned twice in recent years and now has a rather complicated character that does not seem to fit the course wholeheartedly, thought it is a tremendous hole, as is the following ninth (Corsets).

Here, playing along a valley fairway with deep swales, the medium iron approach is played to a high green with run-off over the back and a knoll to negotiate which bites into the mid-point of the green on the left. A well struck ball does tend to gather in to the flag but it is a notoriously difficult putting green.

The second nine holes

The 10th's "infinity" green

The tenth is played in the opposite direction and is of similar length (under 400 yards), with a flat, high ‘infinity’ green, and is not difficult if your judgement of distance is good. It was made famous in Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger as one that ‘had broken many hearts’. Tom Kite would agree with the verdict as he went from bunker to bunker in 1985, thus ruining his Open bid.

The short eleventh is a full shot to a simple-looking green but members don’t concede many putts here.

A typical rumbustuous Sandwich fairway awaits at the twelfth and can give an awkward lie for your short approach that must carry a nest of very deep bunkers at the front of a flattish green, offering one of the few birdie opportunities – though Tiger did four-putt here in 2003!

The next three holes are on flatter land than is typical at Sandwich but are of the finest challenge to the expert player.

The thirteenth has a blind drive towards the old Prince’s Clubhouse (now at last being redeveloped) and numerous, interesting bunkers have to be negotiated that lie naturally in the undulations and gather anything not struck with exact precision. The unusual green with a spine running its length will often cost a bogey after two magnificent shots to reach it.

Peter on the 14th

When the fourteenth was played with hickories, the old-fashioned, penal ditch across the fairway, called ‘Suez Canal’, was a real hazard: now the focus has moved to the risk/reward of playing to the right of the two new bunkers in the middle of the fairway (that remind one of John Low’s historic central bunkers on the fourth hole at Woking GC). These bunkers are 70 yards shy of a new green, now moved further back and closer to the OOB that runs up the entire length of the hole, with the prevailing wind at all times trying to take your ball into Prince’s.

This is a tremendous, strategic hole but long par fours are always a more classic challenge than par fives, so the fifteenth with its newly tightened bunkers on the drive becomes a defining hole of the run-in at Royal St George’s.

The hole requires a similar approach as the eighteenth at Royal Cinque Ports, with a bank kicking your ball away right; many who play into the wind will lay up short of the cross-bunkers and hope for a pitch and putt, but to fly the ball to the saucer-shaped green, that was such a favourite of the well-respected golf architect Tom Simpson, is the winning shot.

The short sixteenth is famously now known for Thomas Bjorn’s double bogey taken from the right-hand bunker in losing the 2003 Open but today the sand level has been raised so we are unlikely to see a repeat disaster.

The 17th green

Two characterful par fours complete the finish and require straight driving and a steady nerve if ‘Duncan’s hollow’ is reached to the left of the eighteenth green. So called because, needing a four to tie with Walter Hagen in the 1922 Open, George Duncan was in the dip and failed to get up and down. As Donald Steel remarks in his classic book on links courses, it seems decidedly unjust that his one blemish is remembered when his near-miracle of almost catching Hagen is forgotten. Sandy Lyle also succumbed to ‘Duncan’s hollow’ but had a stroke in hand to be a popular winner of the 1985 Open.

I continue to maintain that Royal Liverpool at Hoylake is the finest golfing challenge in England and has a fine membership but, my goodness, Sandwich does run it close in terms of history, character and pure class. It is an enormously enjoyable club that reeks of ‘joy to be alive’.

On returning to the comfortable and relaxed Clubhouse, one can enjoy the best showers I have ever experienced anywhere and, though there was much foreboding when the last cook retired, I am happy to report that Royal St George’s still gives the finest golf lunch in the British Isles and, when a match is being played, the choice often of six different roasts.
Reviewed by Lorne Smith 2011.

Many thanks for the best report ever on Royal St. George’s!

William, thats very kind. Lorne

You are reviving many great memories of 40 years of British golf travels.

Thank you Tom, your comment is appreciated. Best wishes, Lorne

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