The Beaverbrook golf course at Cherkley Court quietly opened its tees for play in late September 2016. Fraught with legal challenges, the reputed £90m ultra-exclusive development has seriously tested its owner/developer Longshot (Cherkley Court) Ltd. Those judicial headaches are now in the rear view mirror and the facility is concentrating on covertly attracting wealthy members to join a golf club that will boast not only a hotel and spa, but also, strangely, a cookery school.
Set on the edge of the North Downs, Cherkley Court is the famous former residence of Canadian-born press baron Lord Beaverbrook and its conversion into a luxury hotel completed in 2017, with a new dedicated golf clubhouse which opened in 2018. There’s even an underground maintenance building, so there will be no unsightly tractor sheds at Beaverbrook.
There is no shortage of accessible world-class golf on offer in leafy Surrey. In the ultra-private sector, both Queenwood and The Wisley operate in a similar "no hoi polloi" market to Beaverbrook. In fact, there are more select golf clubs in Surrey than any other location in the UK, so it remains to be seen what will set Beaverbrook apart from the two aforementioned golf clubs. But there’s one other thing Beaverbrook has in common with Queenwood and that’s design.
David McLay Kidd teamed up with eight-time major champion Tom Watson to fashion Beaverbrook. Shortly after bidding an emotional Open farewell at St Andrews in 2015, Watson was interviewed by sports journalist John Whitbread and the Missourian commented as follows:
“All too often I play courses that have been artificially formed.