For a period Harry Colt was so prolific it’s difficult to conclude he committed the same creativity and intensity to every design project he undertook. How discerning was he about the mandates he accepted? Was he more Nicholas Cage than Daniel Day Lewis? Did he at times brief his design team along the lines of...

“We have a compact, unremarkable piece of suburban parkland. I can weave the old HC magic and route 18 holes in the space of 9 before I go out to grab a coffee, you lot follow the formula of the easy drive is the hard approach, throw in a couple of greenside bunkers but not too many, make the par 3’s look nice but remember a gentleman does not like to hit much more than a wedge to a short hole and it would be funny to add a couple of par 4’s that will be ludicrously short when they invent metal. Finish the design this morning and if needed take a late lunch but don’t leave takeaway containers in my conference room again”.

I reconstructed the morning briefing from the evidence at Calcot Park but realised that the Colt design team did not fancy a late lunch that day so expedited their work by re-using hole templates (but not in a C.B Macdonald way). The bland, medium length, first is repeated as the bland, medium length, 18^th. The par 3.5 2^nd appears again as the par 3.25 10^th, the majestic 3^rd reappears as the 14^th, they were so pleased with the 4^th it’s used again on three more occasions and if you enjoy the 9^th just wait until the 16^th.

Considered in isolation there are enough good holes to make Calcot worth a visit but when in Berkshire the opportunity cost is too high.