“Enfield Golf Club is a course with an old-fashioned feel to it,” wrote authors John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming. “The brook affects eight holes, the land is undulating, and steeply up and down, the greens are often on slopes and the bunkering is testing.”
Overall rating
“Enfield Golf Club is a course with an old-fashioned feel to it,” wrote authors John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming. “The brook affects eight holes, the land is undulating, and steeply up and down, the greens are often on slopes and the bunkering is testing.”
Enfield
Enfield Golf Club was founded in 1893 when a 9-hole course was laid out for the members in the Middlesex countryside to the north of London. It’s not known who designed the original layout, but ten years after it was fashioned, the club decided to call in James Braid to extend the course from nine to eighteen holes.
Braid, who was working at nearby Romford, was at the height of his playing powers, having just won The Open the previous year at Muirfield in 1901, but he was also taking the first few steps in his golf course design career, advising half a dozen clubs in the counties of Essex, Suffolk and Sussex.
The new 18-hole Enfield course opened for play in April of 1903, followed shortly after by a competition for invited professional players. Braid set a course record of 78 in a qualifying round, then beat J.H. Taylor in his semi-final match play tie before losing in the final to Harry Vardon.
Twenty-five years later (by which time Braid had collected another four Open titles among many other championship wins) he was called back in to remodel the course when the sale of some land resulted in the loss of two of the longest holes. The course in play today is basically the one that Braid completed in 1929.
“Enfield is a course with an old-fashioned feel to it,” wrote authors John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming in their book James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses. “The brook affects eight holes, the land is undulating, and steeply up and down, the greens are often on slopes and the bunkering is testing.”
Extending to 6,154 yards from the back markers, the course isn’t overly long. The back nine plays 450 yards shorter than the outward half, due largely to the three short par four holes at the 11th, 16th and 18th. The tree-lined fairways fit rather neatly into a compact property, with every inch of available land utilised.
Notable holes include the 390-yard 5th, rated stroke index 2, which plays uphill to the green and the 476-yard 9th, where big hitters might choose to take on Salmon’s Brook from the tee. On the back nine, this threatening water hazard also presents itself in front of the green at the downhill 14th, the final par three on the scorecard.