Going for Golf

Ganton

If there is such a thing as an inland links – and purists will fight to their dying breath that there isn’t – Ganton could claim to be the epitome of one. Or of course, you could call it a heathland course, laid out as it is…  on heathland.

However you look at it though, it is a true gem. This wonderful course is rated the joint-best in Europe according to the current (08/09) Peugeot Guide, alongside such luminaries as the Ailsa course at Turnberry, Muirfield, Royal County Down and Les Bordes.

Despite being nine miles from the sea, this site of a former North Sea inlet has all the ingredients required for a links course except a coastline. Very few trees come into play and some of the bunkers – there are more than 100 in total – are simply huge. It takes a highly skilled golfer – or a very lucky one – to avoid the sand. Accuracy, rather than length, is the key to success here.

The original 1891 design has been tweaked a few times – and among the tweakers are some very well-respected names: Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, JH Taylor, James Braid, Harry Colt, Dr Alister McKenzie and Frank Pennick. Yet it retains the same classic appearance it probably enjoyed when its first professional won the 1896 Open Championship. It was the first of six victories for Harry Vardon.

The legendary golf writer Bernard Darwin once wrote that Ganton was the type of course “one would expect to find in Surrey rather than in Yorkshire”. After all, Wham! could have been singing about Ganton in Club Tropicana, when they said “all that’s missing is the sea…”