Harry Colt was the youngest of six children born to a solicitor father who died when he was only two years old. His mother then moved the family from London to Malvern, where he played golf at Worcestershire Golf Club’s original course on the common, becoming a proficient, plus-handicap player.

After attending Monkton Combe School in Bath, Colt studied law at Clare College, Cambridge. Twelve months after his 1887 enrolment, he joined the committee of the Cambridge University Golf Club and in 1889 became the club's first captain. After graduation he was admitted to the bar, becoming a solicitor and partner in the Hastings law firm of Sayer & Colt.

In 1894 he laid out the new course at Rye with Scottish professional Douglas Rolland and in 1895 was appointed Honorary Secretary of Rye Golf Club with Rolland becoming the club’s first professional. Between 1901 and 1913, Colt served as Sunningdale Golf Club’s first Secretary. Interestingly, when he first took up his appointment at Sunningdale his annual salary was £150.00, about a tenth of what he would have earned had he remained in the legal profession.

In 1907, twelve months after he reached the semi-final of the Amateur Championship, 

 (the first Honorary Secretary at Alwoodley Golf Club) called upon Colt to help him design a new course on the outskirts of Leeds, and the doctor later joined 

 becoming Colt’s second business partner. Two years later, Colt’s new course opened at Stoke Park, framed by the iconic backdrop of the 18th century mansion house, designed by James Wyatt, architect to King George III.

His “least bad course”, Swinley Forest, quietly opened for play in 1911. Authors Henry Lord and Peter Pugh, commented in 

Masters of Design – Great Courses of Colt, MacKenzie, Alison & Morrison

 as follows: “One of the most astonishing things about Colt’s routing was that it was mapped out in his mind’s eye before any of the thousands of pine trees covering the site were removed.”

Already within his portfolio were Blackmoor, St George’s Hill and Camberley Heath. Colt had also visited France and laid out Golf de Saint-Cloud in Paris. He had also sailed to North America and designed new courses for the Toronto Golf Club and the Country Club of Detroit. Additionally, Colt worked with 

 at Old Elm Club and routed Pine Valley with Philadelphian hotelier, George Crump.

In 1913, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, unable to remain committed to his duties at Sunningdale, Colt resigned as Secretary, having now established himself as one of the world’s leading golf course architects. He was now utilising the services of Suttons Seeds, along with George Franks and Claude Harris, who had formed the first golf construction firm, Franks Harris.

“When peace returned at the end of 1918”, remarked Henry Lord and Peter Pugh, “Colt wrote to all his old golfing contacts offering the services of Colt, Alison and MacKenzie… in 1920, [MacKenzie] was increasingly keen to branch out on his own, following Alison to North America and the prestigious commissions he so craved.” MacKenzie left the Colt and Alison partnership in 1923 so “Colt brought a new assistant, the 30-year-old 

, into the fold… In 1922 he began helping Colt with the building of Sunningdale’s New course… In 1928 Morrison was made an official partner and the new company of Colt, Alison & Morrison was formed.”

“Colt had really stopped designing courses in 1939, happy to let his two partners stand out on their own while he remained in the peaceful seclusion of East Hendred with his wife, Laura, until she passed away in 1948.” Henry Shapland "Harry" Colt died three years later in 1951.

 by Donald Steel: “He was the first captain of Rye in 1894, a mere five years after holding office as captain of Cambridge University. His is the first name to be shown on the Honours Board in the dining room at Worlington, although Colt’s Cambridge days preceded the club’s foundation in 1893.

Colt courses are always eminently playable, not heavily-bunkered and with no long carries. Denham is a good example of his handiwork; a stiff enough test to make good players think without posing too much of a handful for the rank and file.

Donald Ross may have had Colt in mind in his general reference to ‘golf as it was meant to be played’. Both were pioneers of a new art whereby great thoughts went into the process of providing a coherent sequence to the layout with interesting green design as a separate study.”

 by Cornish & Whitten: “Several firsts in golf course design are generally attributed to H.S. Colt. He was the first to consistently use a drawing board in preparing his course designs. He was the first to prepare tree-planting plans for his layouts.”

: “In Britain, Harry Colt was the first amateur golfer – rather than professional – to earn a reputation as an architect. Some say he is still the greatest of them all.”

“Colt had a few simple dictums. The early holes should ease you into the round; nothing too demanding at the start. Ideally, every club in the bag should be used, regardless of skill. The routing of the course would be determined by the land, and there would be no hard and fast rule about the numbers of par threes or fives on any given nine… Colt had no peer as a designer of short holes.”

 – such is the capricious nature of ceremonial awards Harry Colt is shamefully absent from the Hall of Fame despite the inclusion of a number of Colt’s contemporaries.


Creating Classics: The golf courses of Harry Colt 

Such is the capricious nature of ceremonial awards, Harry Colt is shamefully absent from the World Golf Hall of Fame despite the inclusion of a number of his contemporaries.

Harry Colt

Harry Colt studied law at Clare College, Cambridge. Twelve months after his 1887 enrolment, he joined the committee of the Cambridge University Golf Club and in 1889 became the club's first captain.

James Braid was born in 1870 to James Braid (a farm worker) and his wife Mary (née Harris) who was an accomplished weaver. His father had two other children from an earlier marriage of which he had been widowed. James came into the world at Liberty Place, between Earlsferry and Elie, but the family later moved to a small weaver’s cottage at 36 High Street, Earlsferry.

James attended Williamsburgh primary school and caddied at the local links, where he learned how to play the game. Entering a junior caddies competition aged eight, he won the event with many strokes to spare. A year later, he saw every shot played by Champion Golfer Jamie Anderson who was playing in a Professionals v Amateurs match on the Elie course.

Braid finished his schooling aged 13 and became an apprentice joiner, walking three miles to and from his place of work six days a week. Two years later, he had enough money to pay his entry fee and annual subscription as a member of Earlsferry Thistle, the artisan club attached to the Elie golf course, and he won the second medal he contested on what was then still an 11-hole layout.

Braid moved to St Andrews in 1889, playing in matches against Andrew Kirkcaldy and his brother Hugh, then moved to Edinburgh two years later, joining the Edinburgh Thistle Club which played on the Braids municipal moorland course overlooking the capital. He spent another two years working there before heading south of the border.

His cousin Charles Smith, the foreman clubmaker at the Army and Navy Stores in London had notified Braid of a vacancy that had arisen. So, although Braid had never made a club in his life and knew nothing about the process, he set off for the Big Smoke with at least an understanding of how to work with wood and tools.

From late 1893 until the summer of 1896, Braid’s time away from his London day job saw him practice at a number of clubs, including Chiswick, Sudbrook Park and Mid-Surrey. He also assisted at Hastings in 1895 before becoming the fulltime professional at Romford a year later.

Braid laid out the course at nearby Theydon Bois in 1898, receiving £4.13s.6d for his efforts. It was a 9-hole affair (which 

 extended to eighteen holes in 1971), most of which is still intact. It would be the first of many courses he’d design but his professional playing career was also in full swing.

Three years after winning his first Open in 1901, Braid moved to Walton Heath and he would remain Head Professional there until his death forty-six years later. The club’s two courses are the work of 

 and the canny Scotsman knew better than to tinker with layouts generally accepted as being among the best in the British Isles.

Instead, he concentrated on winning the Open again and by the end of the decade, he would be crowned Champion Golfer of the Year and hold aloft the Claret Jug a further four times; twice at St Andrews in 1905 and 1910, at Muirfield (again) in 1906 and at Prestwick in 1908.

Braid had a remarkable playing record in The Open, entering every championship between 1896 and 1938. All told, he took part in 39 events (38 consecutively) with an astonishing nineteen Top 10 finishes.

His record in the News of the World match play was also very impressive, competing in 32 consecutive tournaments from 1903 to 1939 (winning four times and finishing runner-up twice).

It’s reckoned that Braid played more than 1800 rounds of 18-hole golf during his playing career in matches, tournaments and qualifying events and his record stands up well against the other two members of the Great Triumvirate – versus Harry Vardon it’s 55 won, 12 drawn, 49 lost and against J.H. Taylor it’s 41 won, 11 drawn, 36 lost.

Braid’s contract at Walton Heath allowed him to be away from the club for up to ninety days during a year so, when he was not competing in tournaments, he was able to travel the length and breadth of the country designing new courses or modifying and advising on existing layouts.

During his career, it’s reckoned Braid designed more than a hundred 9-hole and 18-hole courses. He also extended more than fifty 9-holers to 18-hole layouts and he either reconstructed or altered over two hundred courses in some way or another, even if just advising on new bunker schemes.

Braid rarely travelled abroad – he was apparently affected badly by motion sickness – so his foreign designs are limited to around a dozen in total in N. Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Isle of Man. He ventured occasionally to play on the continent of Europe, winning the French Open at La Boulie in 1910.

Braid used Paisley contractor John R. Stutt for construction work on at least fifty of his projects over a time span of more than quarter of a century and it was his trusted friend Stutt who completed his last course at Stranraer in Dumfries and Galloway, shortly after he died in 1950.

James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses

, authors John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming had this to say in their epilogue: “Braid’s courses seem to stand the test of time better than most… [his] work will never become obsolete: it has actually become ‘required reading’ for today’s trainee architects who, it is to be hoped, will remember the values which Braid established.”

Kevin Kenny ended an essay entitled ‘The design work of James Braid in Ireland’ in the book 

Golf Architecture: A Worldwide Perspective (Volume Six)

“When summing up Braid’s work in Ireland, two things stand out: firstly, the simple but effective practice of adding trees and bunkers to provide definition to the courses under his care; and, secondly, and of greatest significance, the efficient and distinctly non-fussy manner in which he went about his work.

J.R. Stutt, who did most, if not all, of the construction work on Braid’s Irish designs, confirmed that ‘his plans were always crystal clear and definite; and it was exceptional indeed for even minor alterations to be made during the carrying out of his work’.

Similarly, when assessing his qualities as a golf course architect, Bernard Darwin, his friend and biographer, declared that Braid had a ‘good eye for country, a temperate judgement and a fund of plain common sense.’

These qualities were seen to great effect wherever he worked in Ireland. Invariably, this involved short visits, followed by a succinct letter or plan of his suggestions. And Braid’s willingness to utilise nature, as much as sensibly possible, was a constant hallmark.

Today, in an era of large golf design teams utilising earth-moving technology, and firms who introduce artificial water hazards, it is worth remembering that one of the game’s true and lasting giants found such economical ways to create courses. These have been challenging and enjoyable to play. Furthermore, they have endured the test of time.”

Author George E. Payne’s brilliant three-volume book 

Divine Fury of James Braid: Professional Golf Standard Bearer

 pays tribute to James Braid, the man, as illustrated in the following edited extract:

“James Braid was a friend of king and road sweeper alike who never moved a step to seek popularity and yet attained it in rich measure. He refused to have a telephone at home saying if he had one he would never get any peace. Never possessing a car, Braid travelled everywhere by train and was said to know the train timetables to golf venues off by heart.

Over his 80-year lifespan Braid was seldom seriously ill unlike his great friend and rival Harry Vardon. His eyes were his most frequent problem (resulting) from an accident during his time as a joiner in his teens, when he accidentally got lime in his eyes, leaving him almost blind in his left eye.

Vardon, J.H. Taylor and Braid were all relatively abstemious, but all enjoyed a drink. Braid’s favourite tipple was a glass of port. Early in his career Braid was said to be a smoker but by 1911 it was recorded that ‘he never smokes’. In later life he was said to be partial to a pinch of snuff.

Braid was a grand gallery player and crowd pleaser. Wherever he went, if he failed to break the course record, he would certainly hit some record drives, carries and cleek shots, the like of which had never been seen on the course before. This made him a more interesting player to follow than those who played a more methodical steady game without serious risk taking.

Braid habitually went for the big shot if there was any chance of achieving it. They say he was never happier than when playing from deep rough. No rough was too dense for his excavations and no carry too intimidating for his courage. He found the clubs of his day inadequate for getting out of heavy rough and invented the great big niblick.

Braid maintained a Ledger Book in which he kept details of his non-Walton Heath professional’s trading between 1919-20 and 1939-40. Braid’s income after expenses was an average £302-15-5 per annum. The ledger also contains names of greenkeepers who were seeking employment and quotations from clubmakers and tree surgeons.

Braid, though by nature reserved to the point of shyness, was a man of great character. His opinion, if he could be persuaded to give it, carried immense weight and his wisdom and judgement were universally recognised. He had a truly Scottish pawky sense of humour and retained every national characteristic of a Scot, even his accent went unchanged despite the long time he lived in England.

Braid entered hospital in November 1950 for what seemed a routine appendix operation, but sadly he failed to recover from the trauma thereof and passed away, in the presence of his sons, some three weeks later in a nursing home on 27th November. James had the good fortune to lead a full life up to the very end, a happy warrior still in harness.”

Harry Vardon wrote in 1912: “I enjoy nothing more than the sight of Braid getting out of the rough. The best – worst – of Braid in the rough is that it generally means no punishment at all for him. It is a real treat to watch him playing a shot in an extremely difficult position. He has no equal at it. The only place in which he is beaten is the place in which he has no room to swing his club. Give him just enough space to raise the implement and he will recover from anything. The trouble may be gorse or rank grass, or rocks or a railway track; as he takes the club up you know something will have to go, and that the ball will go with it.”

Bernard Darwin wrote in 1934: “As regards golfers, nobody could look so wise as James Braid is. There is nobody whose every word and action is so redolent of sagacity. One thinks of him first and foremost as a man of extraordinary cool, wise judgement. Certainly, no man ever played golf with a wiser head. He was a superb iron player, a master of very kind of running shot and though not a naturally good putter he made himself for one period of his career almost a great one. A better player out of difficulties I am sure was never seen, he was as skilful and resourceful as he was strong.”

J.H. Taylor wrote in 1943: “James had tacked on to him the reputation of a bad putter. This may have been justified when in the early days he was gathering the threads of his game together and showed weakness when it was a matter of knocking the ball into the hole from short distance, a weakness that afflicts all. This supposed weakness is more than compensated by the exactitude of the long run-up approach putts. As a diviner of the true line to the hole there is no superior – I have yet to meet the player who could hole the ten-yard putt with greater regularity.”

Henry Cotton wrote in 1948: “This tall, stooping, ruddy-complexioned old Scot is one of the wonders of the golfing world. Jimmy, besides being a great golfer from a technical point of view, is the possessor of a wonderful temperament; he learned never to show any emotion in his golf, and in addition is a man of very few words. He has a great eye for a golf hole and will cross a tract of virgin land and plot out golf holes as well as any man. He has been a successful golf architect and his many golf courses are not rubber stamped; they are original.”

James Braid and His Four Hundred Golf Courses

 by John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming (2013)

World Golf Hall of Fame – Class of 1976: “James Braid’s worst finish in The Open Championship from 1901-1910 was fifth. In 1904, he was also the first player in an Open to break 70, shooting 69 in the third round at Royal St. George’s.”

James Braid

James Braid was born in 1870 in Earlsferry, the adjoining village to Elie in the East Neuk of Fife. He became a member of Earlsferry Thistle aged fifteen and was off scratch by his sixteenth birthday.

In 1895, Tom Simpson matriculated into Trinity Hall, Cambridge to read Law, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1898, followed by a master's degree in 1902. He married Edith Baynes a year later then was admitted to the Bar in 1905. Strangely, there’s no record of him playing golf competitively whilst at university, though he was subsequently elected to the Oxford & Cambridge Golfing Society in 1934.

A biography of Tom Simpson was published in 

: "A scratch golfer, he played most of his golf at Woking, and became interested in golf course design as he observed the remodelling of Woking's course by club members John Law and Stuart Paton."


Simpson, the only son of mining and printing magnate William Simpson and his wife Mary, spent only five years as a barrister in the legal profession before leaving behind the stifling offices at the Temple in London for a career as a golf course architect with 

Some of his best work was conducted right at the very start of his design career, when he laid out the 9-hole Vallière course at Morfontaine and extended the 9-hole Fontainebleu course to an 18-hole layout. These early French assignments were by no means be his last in that country; in the latter half of the 1920s, he would return to work at Morfontaine and Chantilly, in addition to laying out new courses at Chiberta and Deauville.


The outbreak of World War I curtailed much of Simpson’s design efforts whilst employed with the Ministry of Munitions during hostilities but his architectural talents were put to full use when he became a partner in the Fowler, 

, Simpson and Croome design firm in 1920. Three years later, Simpson moved with his wife and son from Eastbourne to ‘Quinces’ in Bramshott, the next village to Liphook, which then became the firm’s main office (and the family home for more than twenty years).

Simpson handled most of the company’s business in Europe, mainly in Belgium and France, where he laid out or refashioned some of the finest courses on the continent, including Chantilly and Morfontaine, which is widely regarded as his architectural pièce de résistance. He also designed quite a few private courses for the likes of Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sir Mortimer Singer and the Rothchild family.

By the end of the 1920s, his association with Fowler, Abercromby and Croome had ended but he engaged 

 to work with him for a while around that time, renovating the likes of New Zealand and Royal Fagnes. Sutton and Sons built nearly all his golf courses, at home as well as abroad, and they formed a formidable design/construction team over many years.

His next star pupil would be Molly Gourlay, the 2-time English Ladies Amateur Champion, who became a director in Simpson & Co. in 1936. Together, they remodelled four courses in Molly’s native country, namely Ballybunion and Kilkenny (1936), Carlow (1937) and County Louth (1938). Simpson was the first designer to employ a woman's architectural skills.

During the Second World War, Simpson relocated to Humbly Grove, close to Basingstoke, bringing with him his collection of wines, walking sticks, cigars, paintings, etchings and Persian rugs. Many may have thought he was near to retirement but Simpson was far from finished.


After World War II, Simpson worked for a few years in Spain, collaborating on a few projects with local designer 

 before finally retiring in the mid-1950s. From then until his death in 1964, much of his time was spent at his estate in Hampshire writing magazine articles and essays as well as preparing texts for lectures.

 by Alfonso Erhardt, the author observes: “Simpson was a noted eccentric: a collector of walking sticks, Persian rugs, 18th century furniture and cigars. He made a note in a book of every wine he tasted; he took up needlework and sewed maps of his favourite golf holes.”

paid this tribute to Simpson: “He believed the real architectural masterpiece is born and not made, but he belonged to the generation with little or no access to heavy machinery. Some see it as an advantage that he and his contemporaries could only build a certain way. It is a triumph for their ingenuity that they managed so well.” He also described Simpson as “a man of rich and varied talents, a distinguished golf course architect never afraid to speak his mind. It was a combination that made him a colourful and controversial figure although his controversial side, coupled with a whiff of eccentricity, was the offshoot of a penchant for the spotlight.”


Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten describe him as follows in their book 

: “Always a colourful figure, Tom Simpson toured the English countryside in a chauffeur-driven silver Rolls Royce and [he] often appeared for inspections in an embroidered cloak and beret.”

Tom Mackenzie, partner in the design firm 

, has no doubts about where the architect ranks amongst his fellow practitioners: “Tom Simpson is one of the unsung heroes of golf course architecture, whose deserved position is alongside 

 fully endorses that opinion: “I love the artistry of MacKenzie and Colt’s ideas are still applicable today. But for my money Tom Simpson should always be part of that conversation. That Golden Age period set the standards of golf course architecture. So much of what we do today is informed by it – and Tom Simpson contributed to it as much as anybody.”


Tom Simpson illustrated his works with pen and ink, at times embellishing images with water colour, and his illustrations featured regularly in articles written by Bernard Darwin for 

. He was a very good painter, acting as the art critic for the 

and he had a hundred watercolours (mainly of Cornish coastal locations) exhibited at Victoria Galleries in 1911. He could also turn his hand to needlework, which was a skill he used to illustrate pictures of golf holes, and he was known to produce scaled plasticine models of greens he was working on.


Simpson was a man of considerable financial means so he was never reliant on golf to earn a living and this was evident in the way he went about his business. Henry Longhurst, in his autobiography 

, asserted that Simpson “didn’t gave a damn for anyone, particularly golf club committees.”


Bernard Darwin wrote the following in the introduction to Martin Sutton's 1933 book 

Golf Courses - Design, Construction and Upkeep

: "'The main essential of a great course,' as Mr. Simpson succinctly observes, 'is that it should provide an interesting and fair test of golf for every player, irrespective of handicap.' That sounds simple, but there are a few people born with a talent for producing this result better than the rest, and when they have cultivated that talent by anxious thought and long experience, why then they do it ever so much better."

: "Although Simpson experimented with golf holes, he believed the Old Course at St Andrews to be the only enduring test on course design. There are five basic principles that all golf course architects must surely adhere to when considering the design of a golf course:

1. Each hole must be interesting
2. The must be a variety of hole design
3. The natural beauty must be impaired as little as possible
4. The premium must be put on good golf
5. The course must be equally interesting to both the scratch player and high handicap player

Simpson was an accomplished artist, and illustrated his works in colour sketches."

: “Simpson, more than any of his contemporaries, pushed design to its limits in the search for interest and excitement. There 

 limits, however. He recognised that, only a little farther on, a hole became fluky and silly (sometimes people thought he had crossed that line). Design which went all the way up to this point produced a ‘mad masterpiece’. It would begin working on the player’s mind even before he got to the tee. St Andrews 12, 13, 14, 16, & 17; Prestwick, Sea Headrig; Woking, No.4; West Sussex, No.13 and Addington, No.8 – all these qualified as ‘mad masterpieces’. A hole must either be more difficult that it looks or look more difficult than it is. It must never be what it looks.”

"Simpson's ‘Bible’ consisted of a 272 page notebook, thumb indexed alphabetically, into which he wrote or pasted every scrap of information which he thought might ever be useful to him in his work while on travels. They covered design, building, greenkeeping, surveying, watering, estimating, stock replies to enquiries, standard forms of report and arrangement, fees, useful quotations, equipment and much more. All this was bound in an old leather binding apparently removed from another book… Almost all the pages of the book have been used, but some are blank, or absent. It starts with two salutary inscriptions:

‘N.B. The really wise lawyer is not the one who knows and memorises the law but rather knows where to find it. Hence this book. This is true of The Golf Secretary & The Golf Architect.’

‘Almost ninety percent of criticisms made by members are due to Invincible Ignorance.’”

Tom Simpson’s “Bible” was handed down to C.K. Cotton and was subsequently gifted to Donald Steel, who commented as follows in his book 

; “but perhaps Ken’s greatest act of kindness to me was his bestowal of Tom Simpson’s ‘Golf Architect’s Bible’ which is an amazing leather bound miscellany of architectural and greenkeeping ‘secrets’. The fact that there is only one copy is because it is predominantly hand-written.”


has this to say about the architect: “Ever the quintessential artist, Tom Simpson is thought to have been eccentric. Simpson was always happy to promote his own work, and was never short of an opinion. Upon attaining a new commission, his habit was to arrive at the club in a silver-coloured Rolls Royce: just to prove that he did not need the money.

However, although perhaps outwardly arrogant, Tom Simpson frequently held those of merit in high regard. In 

, Simpson credits Harry Colt, John Abercromby and Herbert Fowler with saving golf from ‘the Dark Ages’“.

 magazine, made mention of Simpson’s natural ability to court controversy: “Despite the obvious flair Simpson brought to golf course creation, his ideas were not universally popular. His unique ‘customer-is-always-wrong’ approach did him few favours, but the plain fact was that Planet Golf did not wholly buy into his practices. His belief in trapping the centre of the fairway to promote strategy was a tough sell, and whenever he did so, he was criticised.

His famous fairway trap at Carnoustie’s par-5 6th – the one that created Hogan’s Alley – was one of the few that was actually built; many others, like those advised for Muirfield’s 12th, were not, though Muirfield did adopt his suggestion of a more central trap – ‘Simpson’s Folly’ – some 40 yards short of the 9th green.

Neither did Simpson’s relish for causing mental mayhem endear him. A confirmed amateur, he enjoyed and encouraged luck; he liked to use slopes and shapes to confound the golfer; something of a design satirist, he especially liked trapping the golfer who flexed his muscles before engaging the grey matter. His contrary nature meant that, at times, he seemed to bring these elements into his design just to goad the more sober and staid golf course committees who had commissioned him.

Surely the best examples of these issues came at Harry Colt’s Sunningdale New. In 1934 Simpson created four new holes, the 6th-9th, as part of a comprehensive redesign. However they proved so unpopular that within two years Colt himself had been drafted in to literally reverse them. Simpson suffered a similar fate both at Royal Porthcawl and Rye, where some of his comprehensive 1930s revisions were later redesigned.”

Tom Simpson and H. N. Wethered (the father of Roger and Joyce) co-wrote 

Simpson also contributed four chapters to Roger and Joyce Wethered’s 

Golf Courses: Design, Construction and Upkeep

 by Martin Sutton, published in 1933, revised in 1950.

 by Fred Hawtree was published by Rhod McEwan in 2016 and it’s essential reading for anybody interested in Simpson’s work:

"It is only the mad masterpieces of the world that live in one's memory, such as holes 12, 13, 14, 16 and 17 at St Andrews, Sea Headrig at Prestwick, the 4th at Woking, the 14th at Liphook, the 13th at West Sussex and the 8th at Addington, to mention but a few of the classics." Tom Simpson

Tom Simpson

Tom Simpson spent only five years as a barrister before leaving behind the stifling offices at the Temple in London for a career as a golf course architect with Herbert Fowler in 1910.

Hampshire

England

North Hants Golf Club is located at Fleet on the western edge of the glorious sand belt, which cuts through Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire. This delightful heathland course is set enchantingly amongst stately pines and silver birch trees and, naturally, heather and gorse abound.

The club was originally founded in 1904 and James Braid, the designer, described the course as, "most sporting and interesting". But the plans were ambitious: North Hants was to be more than just a golf club. This was one of the first projects to create an American-styled country club and the clubhouse provided excellent facilities, while high quality tennis courts and croquet lawns attracted Hampshire's high society.

In 1913, the course was re-shaped by Harry Colt for the princely sum of £25 and in the 1930s, Tom Simpson made further modifications. Sadly, the tennis and croquet sections of the North Hants Club did not survive the Second World War and the land formerly used for these sports was transformed into one of the country's first golf practice grounds.

Following Donald Steel's modifications to three holes in 2001, today's course now measures 6,565 yards from the tips. Although it's not the longest course, it does represent is a real challenge. Accuracy from the tee is an essential ingredient because most holes are set between avenues of trees and you'll need to find the correct part of the fairway to attack the generous but well-protected greens with your approach shot.

Donald Steel's protégé Tom Mackenzie redesigned the par five 3rd hole in 2019, allowing it to be split into two holes when required, 3a and 3b. This was done to facilitate planned work by the local water authority which would result in the 15th hole being taken out of action for a period of time.


North Hants was used for Final Qualifying for the 2004 Women's British Open and the club also stages an annual amateur competition called the Hampshire Hog. Michael Bonallack won the inaugural 1957 event, but failed to defend his title the following year. 22 years later, in 1979, Bonallack returned to reclaim the title. Sandy Lyle and Gordon Brand Jnr. have also emerged as subsequent "Hog" winners.

Undoubtedly, North Hants has a fascinating history but it would be remiss of us not to mention the club's most famous son - Justin Rose. In 1995, at the tender age of fourteen, Rose won the Hampshire Hog with a record score of 134. When he turned professional in 1998, Rose was still a North Hants junior member and now, he's an Honorary Member. No doubt each and every club member follows his progress with great interest.

North Hants

Liphook

Britain & Ireland

North Hants - home of Justin Rose. A delightful undulating heathland course, touched by the hands of numerous great architects.