Forest Pines Golf Club (Forest & Pines)

Lincolnshire is home to one of the world’s greatest inland courses and Woodhall Spa is also home to the English Golf Union but apart from Seacroft at Skegness and Luffenham Heath near Rutland Water, the fenland county has little to write home about. That was until 1996 when Forest Pines Golf & Country Club, near Scunthorpe, opened its 27 tees for play.

Englishman and PGA Tour player John Morgan, who sadly died in June 2006 following a long battle against a brain tumour, designed Forest Pines. It is a course that he was justifiably proud, especially as Golf World adjudged it the best new golf course in England opened since 1994.

There is a hint of Woburn and a touch of Wentworth at Forest Pines and with 27 holes it’s a popular and pleasantly informal corporate and society venue. Each of the three loops of nine, called Forest, Pines and Beeches starts and ends at the clubhouse, twisting and turning through the pines along the way. The best and most challenging combination comprises of the Forest and Pines layout which measures 6,859 yards from the tips. The shorter Beeches loop, with its three one-shot holes, makes for an ideal warm up ahead of the sterner championship challenge.

When Barry Ward was Golf Monthly’s Travel Editor he commented, “Being a minimalist, John [Morgan] has produced a refreshingly old fashioned course, one to delight the purists. There’s more than a suggestion of Braid about the mounded bunkering, for instance, and a hint of MacKenzie in the greens.”