Pitchmarks #47 - 26th May 2024 - The twin beaks of Byfleet
“There is the theory of the Möbius; a twist in the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop”
Worf, in Star Trek (Season 2; Episode 13)
As a child I recall leafing through an atlas, enchanted by place-names, and somewhat bewildered at the sheer volume of towns and villages. For every major city, whose name is known around the world, there’d be a hundred hamlets, all with their own little stories to tell. And the atlas of golf tells a similar tale - for every Muirfield, a Monifieth; for every Pebble Beach, a Pacific Grove.
I’d not heard of Byfleet before looking up how to get there twenty-odd years ago, to play a place I’d heard only whispers of - New Zealand. But that course sunk its hooks in me, and before long the town had, too, and we’ve lived nearby ever since. And then, a little while back, I finally stepped onto West Byfleet’s first tee - only a drive and a few good blows of a mashie from New Zealand - and discovered another gem, hidden in plain sight, lurking on my doorstep.
The world is full of pockets of great golf, with courses of fine pedigree in close proximity, and Surrey has perhaps the greatest strength in depth of all. But for all the glorious golfing journeys, for all the famous championship tracks, sometimes it is just grounding to spend time near one’s nest; to feel at home.
There’s a shared lineage in these two clubs - Hugh Locke King was the land-owner when New Zealand was built, and he later offered some space for Bleakdown to be built down the road, which then turned into West Byfleet. Bleakdown was a club for the locals, while the New Zealand members came out of London by train, pulling a cord to halt their carriage under the bridge by West Byfleet’s clubhouse, from where a horse and trap would escort them to the tee, or the Dining Room. Or probably both.
There’s much in the architecture, too - New Zealand was laid out and then managed by Samuel “Mure” Fergusson, who would serve as the Secretary of Bleakdown for a period, too. By the time he died in the tower above the clubhouse in the late ‘20’s, New Zealand was owned by the members, as even Locke King’s considerable purse-strings had been tightened by the escalating costs of his other passion - the race track at Brooklands. In the meantime, the Haskell ball had changed the game, and with Mure’s passing, the club sought a more strategic style of golf, with Tom Simpson’s artistic hand replacing penal cross hazards with subtle bunkers; punishment replaced by poetry. Of late, Clayton, DeVries & Pont have worked to open up and restore much of the original feel of Simpson’s treasure in the pines.
Cuthbert Butchart would lay out much of the original course at Bleakdown, but in the early part of the same decade, West Byfleet would change in name and content. J.F Abercromby had by then built the majestic Worplesdon, and lived at Addington, where his magnificent Old Course was surpassed only by the about-to-open New, the ghost of which still shimmers in the forest over Shirley Church Road. But Aber found time to cast his eye over this thin strip of land alongside the railway, and his bold touch created a masterpiece to rival the haunt of his old friend Mure up the road. Parts of the course were turned over to the war efforts, but John Morrison, Harry Colt’s business partner, would be brought in to restore and re-open the course in the early ‘50’s, and Mackenzie & Ebert have in recent years polished this most collaborative of architectural monuments.
In style, they’re a world apart; yet to me they’re forever entwined - connected by the purity of the golfing challenge; related by the shared origin story. It feels lazy to pick out holes to celebrate, for both New Zealand and West Byfleet feel like complete golf courses to me; thirty-six holes of individual character in two coherent routings. No weak holes remain in the parish of Byfleet, though of course some shout louder than others, and we all have our own tastes, tempered by personal success and failure.
At New Zealand, the broad first fairway is a sign of things to come - the width is welcoming, but the approach needs to come from the left, and a recurrent theme of Simpson’s legacy is in the superb positioning of sand. From here, the second is a kick in the teeth; a foreboding drive into the prevailing wind, and another long second shot. The fourth is enchanting, so simple yet cunning, and after the seventh, you need the obligatory pit-stop at the hut to lick your wounds. And then the eighth, a triumph of design over distance, with a green whose putts sometimes break up the hill…
By the time you cross back over Martyrs Lane to the twelfth, this match-play course is shifting gears towards the climax. That green site is heavenly, then at the thirteenth, Simpson left us in the centre of the fairway the same tribute to “The Principal’s Nose” bunkers that changed him at Woking a couple of decades earlier. By the sixteenth, you’re ecstatic at this corridor of peaceful heathland, until your ball falls short into a sea of the stuff. And then - the final flourish in Simpson’s masterful reincarnation of this wonderful place - the seventeenth and eighteenth are a case study in angles, bunkering, green complexes and aesthetics.
Leave me a few balls and a wedge, and a place to spend all eternity, and I’ll choose the penultimate green, and never, ever get bored. Or so I thought until I found the strange canyon short of the seventh green down the road; another place that looks very much like paradise to me. Perhaps I’ll come back as a woodpecker - the beaked marvel the logo of both clubs - and spend the time flitting my swooping glide between both nooks.
By contrast with the intimate corridors of New Zealand, Abercromby’s West Byfleet seems an expansive park. Between the blend of oak and pine run hole after hole of pristine turf; the contoured greens and flashed white sand straight out of an oil painting. Here too, the start is gentle, but by the time you face the delicate riddle of the brilliant fifth, and the sweeping climb of the gorgeous sixth, you’re in a trance. If you survive the treacherous seventh, another refreshment stop awaits, and, like at New Zealand, the eighth is short but plenty dangerous.
You head west from here until the thirteenth green, but to reach that surface - pitched against play - you must carry your ball over an ancient hazard; my golfing equivalent of Walden Pond, down at the far reaches of this marvel. Many a ball rests deep in the water there, but if I ever tire of standing over that shot - willing the ball to not only clear the trouble but find the hole - I shall know it is time to hang up the clubs. Or throw them in the pond along with the balls they helped put in there…
Fourteen is the work of genius; the angle from the tee providing a recurrent puzzle to solve. And from here we head steadily towards that final green, via the stunning, short seventeenth - the sole contribution of James Braid to West Byfleet’s patchwork quilt of quality design.
But ask me tomorrow and I’ll have another dozen holes to rave about, and a different set by Thursday. For there is, in these two courses - these “twin beaks of Byfleet” - something for everyone. By this autumn, golf will have been played across these properties for two hundred and fifty years (though West Byfleet has had two Centenaries; any excuse to open another bottle or two*), but in today’s light - with the sun shining off the surface of the greens and the Rhododenrons in their mighty pomp - they could be brand new, for they remain so relevant, so important, for so many of us.
Who could possibly count how many dreams have played out across these acres; how many smiles and laughs and shanks they’ve hosted? How many putts fell in, and how many lives have been touched by what Mure and Hugh and Aber and the rest left behind them?
If Worf was right, and there is somewhere a time-warp where history repeats itself and we just go round and round and round, let me be somewhere in the vicinity of Byfleet when the Möbius strip goes live, with a few woodpeckers for company. I’ll be just fine there…
* In 2006, the club celebrated 100 years since the opening of Bleakdown. But since Abercromby’s changes to the course were made at the time Locke King sold the freehold to the club, it became West Byfleet in 1922, so a further history book and round of celebrations were had!
I’ve not played NZ or West Byfleet, or any other course in the area for that matter, despite driving past them many times when I travelled to London every week for over 10 years.
Ah the Rhododendrons. My friend Mr Joss, we need to darken the authors door ⛳️ Another visual masterpiece!