Pitchmarks #45 - 12th May 2024 - Tandridge

Colt’s brilliant twelfth, as the South Downs appear in the distance.

The first golf played across the rolling fields of Tandridge Park was in June 1924, ahead of the grand opening that October. Frustrated by the prohibition of Sunday golf on the heath at nearly Limpsfield Chart, a small group led by Sir Henry Gibson hatched a plan for an eighteen hole course on land owned by a local baronet, Sir Bernard Greenwell.

Gibson had recently retired as Auditor General of the War Office, but he would entrust the audit of the available golfing terrain to one Harry Shapland Colt. Following the success of St George’s Hill, Swinley Forest and many others, Colt was in high demand through the twenties, but one can imagine him licking his lips as he set eyes on the property at Tandridge, from which he initially chose 146 acres to carry out his work.

Another small parcel of land would be secured to enable the fifteenth and sixteenth to better fit the jigsaw, and the eleventh green and twelfth tee would be swapped as traffic across the course began to increase, but other than that, Colt’s creative and thrilling routing remains intact today, though it is hard to conceive how he could even start planning such an epic golfing journey.

Swinging off the London Orbital road, one feels an immediate shift towards tranquillity in the swathe of green countryside that is Oxted, and this only increases as the driveway draws you up behind the first tee to the Clubhouse. Though the course remains largely as Colt left it, the original, thatched building caught fire in 1927, but its replacement is utterly charming, with carved wooden panelling softening the ambience of an intimate bar area.

We wish each other luck and set off down the first, where a generous fairway gets us moving. From there, the sublime second swings down and right, and the green perched in the corner is an early statement from Colt - daring the player to be bold enough to get their ball up to the flag. Behind the pin are timeless views of grazing horses and the chalky spine of the North Downs, and this expansive feel will persist as the round goes on, not least as a result of some judicious woodland management.

After the treacherous short fourth, a gorgeous spell of par fours test the player’s mental and physical strength, and a central theme of this masterpiece emerges - imaginative green sites, combined with well-positioned bunkers. Shortly after opening, The Times would describe Colt’s Tandridge as being “on a grand, bold scale, eminently fair, but devilishly ingenious”, and as I lick my wounds gazing back down the brilliant seventh, that closing couplet makes perfect sense. It is barely three hundred yards from our tees today, yet the architect makes us work for every stroke, and scrape a half in four.

Another fine short hole follows - this being one of the best examples of Colt’s flair and variety in the art of the par three - then the sweeping ninth takes us back to the clubhouse for a pit-stop, during which it occurs to me how easily we resort to lazy cliches in order to categorise our experiences. So often, Tandridge is celebrated for its back nine, or the famous lunch, and while both are magnificent, to focus too much on those is to not do justice to the bigger picture.

The tenth and eleventh take us up to the far corner of the course, from which what Bernard Darwin once called Tandridge’s “noble expanse of view” is staggering. Colt’s dazzling dogleg twelfth - a par five that snakes the course’s boundary whilst sweeping right and up to a horizon green with the South Downs far beyond - is the sort of hole that would enhance any golf course on the planet, but in recent years the inner crook of the dogleg has been cleared, opening up a panoramic vista as well as a glimpse of the elusive flag, perched in the distance.

Tackle this gem and your reward is immediate as you face the treacherous thirteenth. Two hundred and twenty-three yards, into the prevailing breeze and with grave danger out right, it feels like an inland version of Royal Portrush’s Calamity Corner, another “devilishly ingenious” gift from Colt.

We survive - just - and then our eyes turn right, and the luscious, enchanting fourteenth flows down to a distant green, perched in the hillside at an angle. Of late, this string of three holes has come to be known as “Colt Corner”, and I imagine his ghost leaning on a cleek beside the back tee here, or standing beside the twelfth green as if they are his pulpits, first imagining and then creating these monuments. Much has changed since 1924, but to experience how demanding and mouth-watering this legacy remains today is to step into Colt’s domain for a moment. Genius persists…

The par three fifteenth provides respite, and the short four sixteenth is another sweet, strategic challenge. But for me, though it is hard to pick out any single features, the seventeenth seems an under-celebrated element of Tandridge. From a high tee, the wide fairway lies invitingly before you, with a bunker just where you want to aim, and a gentle camber to pull landing balls left, away from the optimum line of approach. The green is perched in the slope that rises to the eighteenth tee, sloping hard left to right and with a steep false front to guard it. It’s a divine slice of architecture, this, and the vicious contours keep the match alive as all four of us seem terrified of the hole.

On the last green, we shake hands and gaze around this sunlit arena, perched between two ancient, parallel ridges of the English countryside, and I ponder Tandridge’s place in the rich vein of golfing terrain that is the south-east. Plucked from here and slotted in the heaths of North Surrey or Berkshire, Tandridge would surely stand up to that tough competition; a golf course whose pedigree is as strong as any, whose challenge and relevance remains undimmed a century on. But to lose the accompanying views and the fresh breeze of this unique location would be a shame, for it is the course’s natural feel that somehow completes the picture.

Later, thinking about the attention to detail that is evident throughout the course presentation but also within the splendid clubhouse, I am cheered to have seen a club at the start of a very special season in such fabulous condition. The passion of the Course Manager for his craft somehow manifests from every flowing cut-line, every crisp hole position. If Harry Colt is the artist, Scott Weale is the curator, and we are the grateful beneficiaries of this marvellous exhibition. And indoors, broad smiles reverberate through the staff and the members alike, and it all makes sense, for this is a place people like to be. No, love to be.

And then I remember that, walking up towards the ninth green, I’d noticed the flag at half-mast, and mentioned it to Luke Edgcumbe, to whose iron play I was already heavily indebted. It’s an occupational hazard in this line of work, seeing the golfing congregation slowly get old and drift away, and the flag move up and down the pole, but Luke admitted that there was a malfunction with the flagstaff, and a replacement on order. And somehow, as the lowered Tandridge colours flap in the breeze for the hundredth spring, the fact that correction of the only tiny detail I found out of place all day was already in hand just summed up how well this place is looked after. And Tandridge deserves that level of care.

Colt built in this rolling countryside one of his finest works, and must have left a little bit of his heart here when leaving. But Tandridge is thriving today, and that is a testament to his extraordinary vision, and to a hundred years of thoughtful custodians. If he could see it now, I doubt he’d change a thing. Happy birthday, Tandridge!

100 not out.