Great Yarmouth & Caister

Several courses in the UK and Ireland are laid out within racecourses – Musselburgh (Old) in Scotland and Gowran Park in Ireland spring immediately to mind – but Great Yarmouth & Caister Golf Club takes this interaction of golf and horse racing onto a new level, with golfers having to duck under the rails several times during the course of a round.

The club was formed in 1882 when a 13-hole layout was brought into play but, by the end of the following year, North Berwick-born professional Tom Dunn had extended the course to eighteen holes. After the club merged with near neighbour Caister in 1913, Harry Colt is said to have designed an 18-hole course over land that had been used by both clubs but World War I prevented this development from ever going ahead.

The racetrack was relocated to its present position just after the Great War and a revised course was completed in 1921, with an exhibition match between Ted Ray, George Duncan and local professionals J.B. Batley and Len Holland to mark the occasion. Tank defences laid across the course during World War II were removed when hostilities ceased but, apart from that, the layout has remained intact for almost a century.

The 7th is the only short hole on the outward half, played to a two-tiered green that falls away on either side of the putting surface. On the back nine, the only two par fives on the card at 13 and 15 are sandwiched either side of another terrific par three at the 161-yard 14th, where the green is protected by a rather fearsome looking bunker to the front right of the putting surface.