XLVI: Woking
Come the turn of the 20th century, Great Britain’s inland golf was all but without a pulse as golfers fled heavy clay soils and kept their shoes dry on the links – the way the game was intended to be played. Not least drier, coastal courses were also immeasurably more interesting as the strategic nature of hazards was primarily reserved for the seaside, whilst those residing inland were generally clumsy in their placement and presentation.
There is little doubt that carving a compelling puzzle along rumpled, random and sandy soil comes a little more naturally than the less admired land away from the coast, but as we take a step back to consider the joyful conundrums in the wooded heath of Surrey which we find today, a glass must be raised to Woking Golf Club. It is across these hallowed grounds where landlocked hazards found their form, crowding the heart of fairways, contesting approaches and shepherding inland golf to a much more compelling future.
Woking's elegant and strategic traps cutting through the 14th fairway
On the whole, Woking is not a place which sets out to overwhelm – the land stands relatively tame, its golfy views are confined within its fences, its scale trends towards intimacy and there is little to grip the disinterested mind or the unobservant thrasher. Much of Woking’s excellence lies famously in its ability to engage, test and entertain with subtlety- its landforms, hazards and wonderfully convoluted putting surfaces conspiring hand in hand to deliver the ethos of the seaside game.
At Woking thoughtful golf is justly rewarded but fairness finds itself firmly in the back seat – a most pleasurable expression of the sport.
Few vistas scream golf quite like the sixth tee at Woking
Thoughtful Hazards and the Power of Restraint
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One of Woking’s greatest strengths is the intelligence of its restraint, most notably in its sparing use of bunkers – a tightfisted 47 in total. With holes cutting through excellent grounds for golf, this frugal scattering of hazards allows its landforms space to breathe and drive the game as it does across the linksland. At Woking every trap serves as a strategic nuisance.
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The one-two punch at the third and fourth delivery an early education in the strategic qualities of Woking’s economical bunkering. The third is a wonderfully handsome hole as it dives downhill and sweeps right, the aggressive tilt of its fairway sending balls careening left. With its green mowed into a shallow bowl, every approach is controlled by a lone trap which patrols the front of the green and the pin position beyond – the simplicity of its merits highlighting Woking’s most endearing feature.
The lone hazard guarding the third green
The most famous tale of Woking’s hazards arrives at the fourth tee – a hole which in its original form ran straight ahead to an open fairway with railway lines straddling its right. until member Stuart Paton dug a pair of bunkers in the heart of the landing zone. With a bail out left of the bunkers leaving a terrifying approach over another fronting the left half of the green, the golfer with the courage to thread one between Paton’s bunkers and the railway lines was granted an enormous advantage. Quite innocuously, by going above the Board of the club’s head and digging strategy from an otherwise bland hole, Paton had created one of inland golf’s most compelling puzzles.
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The simple queries of the centreline bunkers at four (Photo: Evalu18.com)
Much of the philosophy of the third and fourth is prevalent throughout Woking’s layout today and the conundrums of its centreline hazards make for a constant examination where each fairway boasts a more advantageous half - bravery and execution at its core.
Layers of hazards protecting the 8th
The Game’s Finest Set of Inland Greens?
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An intriguing set of greens can breathe life into the most docile of layouts, so combining what may be the game’s finest collection of inland greens with the qualities of Woking’s strategic layout delivers something entirely unique to the London Heathlands.
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Woking’s surfaces find wonderful variety in their severity, shapes and sizes – some large and ferociously convoluted with greens within greens, others find their challenge more discretely with tilt pushing balls sharply from the line of play. The halfpipe green at the short seventh and aforementioned punchbowl third present flashes of the eccentricities to come, with Woking’s most aggressive surfaces delivered on the back nine.
Looking back down the lovely rolls of the sixth green
The multiple sections of the twelfth bleeding from the hillside the most famous of the bunch. With a range of dynamic pins available, the twelfth green could hold golfers’ attention with a bucket of balls and a wedge in hand for hours.
The depression which splits the thirteenth green and the bumps and hollows of the fifteenth makes a trio of all-world complexes, elevating a more sedate section of the property.
One of golf's great greens at the twelfth
The short eighteenth is crafty as its three-tiered surface tilts steeply to the back right of the green, funelling approaches towards the pond and transforming a simple closer to one of the fiddliest approaches on the course, particularly if as a back right flag pushes golfers straight into its midst.
The subtle tilt of the 18th green
Divine One-Shotters
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The Second
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A one-shot hole of grand scale, Woking’s second plays over 200-yards, uphill and across a valley to a domed green. The two staggered bunkers challenge the golfer’s depth perception and any miss short or right faces a long uphill pitch back up the slopes.
The brutal uphill second
The Seventh
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The charming seventh puts a short iron in players’ hands, but the small, severely sloped putting surface flanked by a pair of traps puts accuracy at a premium. A wonderful counterbalance to the long second.
A wonderful pin on seven
The Sixteenth
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One of Woking’s most striking holes, the angled green across the pond of the sixteenth is another quite wild affair as it rises up and right. One of the few greens smothered by bunkers, the hole is uncharacteristically loud – though no less compelling.
The busy 16th
Though some encounters with Woking’s clubhouse terrace which lurks a handful of feet beyond the fourteenth green may be a little close for comfort, there are few more splendid spots to digest a loop of one of golf architecture’s most important cathedrals. Woking’s layout carves interest and challenge in a wide range of ways with admirable efficiency, but never in lieu of amusement. There are few more endearing displays of inland design and Woking has stood the test of time, remaining on a short list of courses which would be the most satisfying to play every day.
Precarious seats beyond the 14th green