Founded in 1883, the same year as Hayling Island, the Army Golf Club has deep military connections but is now largely in civilian hands. Today’s course was laid out in the 1970s and is a stern 6,550-yard test.
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Founded in 1883, the same year as Hayling Island, the Army Golf Club has deep military connections but is now largely in civilian hands. Today’s course was laid out in the 1970s and is a stern 6,550-yard test.
Army Golf Club
The provenance of the Army golf course is rather interesting and the development of the club is just as absorbing – how many golf clubs do you know that have had six names, five clubhouses and eight courses?
Aldershot Divisional Golf Club was established in 1883, with members playing on a 10-hole course that was arranged so that a round of 12 or 18 holes could be played, on the west side of the military barracks. The Royal Aldershot Officers’ Club came into use as the first clubhouse.
The club changed its name and moved several times before James Braid played an exhibition match on 29 May 1909 to mark the opening of the club’s new course on Laffan’s Plain. Soon after the end of World War II, yet another new course was abandoned, with a replacement 9-hole layout brought into play.
In 1974, seven years after an 18-hole track had been set out to the south west of the old 9-hole Torrie course, this layout was now vacated in favour of a new 18-hole layout on Laffan’s Plain and Watt’s Common. The clubhouse moved to Berkshire Copse and the final name change, to Army Golf Club, was made.
As for the modern day course, it’s laid out through pleasantly undulating woodland between Farnborough and Aldershot, measuring 6,550 yards from the back tees, playing to a par of 71. Ditches run alongside or cut across several of the holes, ensuring excess rainfall is efficiently dealt with, leaving fairways dry and fully in play, whatever the weather.
The 441-yard 4th “Government House” is the toughest hole on the front nine, veering left past a wall of rhododendrons, with the fairway bending towards a green that slopes markedly from right to left. The 355-yard 7th “Graveyard” is another fine par four on the outward half and it’s also a left doglegged hole, played to a testing, two-tiered green.
The signature hole at Army Golf Club is regarded as the 399-yard 15th “Spilway”, which was remodeled in 2001. A stream snakes across the fairway in front of the green, so it’s better to be long than short with the approach shot. Another recently upgraded hole is the 409-yard 18th “Goose Green”, where the fairway curves gently right to a tricky, two-tiered home green.