The Abbey
Donald Steel had a hand in designing many of the region’s best-loved courses. The Abbey Hotel Golf and Country Club, like the Forest of Arden, is a relative newcomer having been built under Steel’s gaze in the late 1970s but it sports all his hallmarks.
A parkland course, the landscape nevertheless allows wide open spaces and the fairways are generous in their width, encouraging a decent rip off the tees. The rough is not too punishing, befitting a course aimed at all abilities including juniors. But beware! The trees put in place at Steel’s behest have matured and more recent upgrades have seen the course lengthened.
Sitting in a pretty north-west corner of Worcestershire this comfortable track wends its way around a community of private houses and the watchful, sometimes worried looks, of the local inhabitants tend to focus your attention on the middle of the wide fairways. Water – be it small lakes or streams – awaits stray shots and particularly comes into play on the seventh hole, a 192-yard drive from the medal tee with the green surrounded on three sides by the River Arrow.
The eighth requires you to cut the corner of a lake – if you take the Tiger line – but the reward is an easier approach with your second and a chance of scoring well. Water on the 17th again tempts the errant drive although ladies enjoy a kindlier tee position negating the need to carry the lake.
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