Swinley Forest

There is a glorious stretch of golfing country in the heathland of Surrey where great courses cluster beside each other. Glamorous Wentworth appears through the train windows as Sunningdale station approaches, while the Sunningdale courses themselves in all their majesty are just across the road once the train has pulled in.   Less familiar is perhaps the most enchanting of them all, Swinley Forest.

The course wanders through the towering Scots pines, each hole a self-contained oasis of calm. I played two rounds on cloudless autumn days with virtually no sight of any other matches.  Swinley is not long, but demands sustained accuracy and concentration to thread the ball through the hazards, and then to negotiate the subtle undulations of the greens.

Heather is of course the great challenge of the Surrey courses. It is a most demanding and rugged plant, entrapping the benighted golfer who strays from the fairway with the illusion that the green is still reachable. After all, the ball is visible and surprisingly seldom actually lost – but bitter experience has taught me that it is every bit as penal as the deep grasses of the links with which I am so much more acquainted. A chop out with a wedge must be the limit of one’s ambition. Mysteriously I have rarely encountered heather on Scottish golf courses, even if it covers the hills of my native land in its purple glory. When I think of heather on golf courses, it is Surrey that comes to mind rather than Scotland.

Swinley has always retained an understated aura. For many years the club eschewed the modern brashness of handicaps and medals, leaving such competitive baubles to its more ostentatious neighbours. I am not sure the tale is strictly accurate, but what a wonderful account of the origins of the club has been built around Lord Derby’s late appearance at King Edward VII’s dinner table as a result of being held up by a slow fourball at Sunningdale.

‘Surely a man in your position’, the monarch allegedly opined, ‘ought to have your own golf course’. And he proceeded to help Derby do just that by leasing him most of the land on which the course was built from the Crown Estates.