Carmarthen

The founding members of Carmarthen Golf Club – established in 1907 – led something of a nomadic existence, playing on no fewer than five different sites over twenty-year period before they finally settled down in 1928 on top of Foel Hill, at Rhydymarchog, north of Carmarthen town.

Five times Open champion, John Henry Taylor, designed the 18-hole layout and it is said that, in order to clear the new layout (and presumably to help keep costs down), the club captain dragooned a number of members into lining up across the fairways to collect loose stones in buckets – and, apparently, this exercise took only two days to complete!

The modern day Carmarthen course measures 6,243 yards for a par of 71 and its tree-lined fairways fan out over the rolling parkland, with Taylor’s design making the most of a relatively small acreage of land. One of the best holes on the card is “Oak,” the 390-yard, left doglegged, par four 17th where the approach shot must find the flag on the correct level of a two tiered green that has a bunker front right for added protection.