Norwood Park (Norwood) - Nottinghamshire - England

Situated on the fringes of the minister town of Southwell, within the parkland estate of Norwood Hall, the 27-hole facility at the Norwood Park Golf Centre was designed by American architect Clyde Johnson in the late 1990s.

Stretching to 6,805 yards from the back markers, the Norwood course is configured as two sets of returning nines, with several of the holes routed around legacy orchards that are famed for their annual production of Bramley Apples.

We were intrigued to find out how Clyde Johnson got the design contract here so he very kindly told us the following:

“The Starkey family was researching successful golf courses in the United States and somehow they met and befriended a client of mine from Myrtle Beach. My client made a trip to the Norwood Park site and upon his review, called me and we discussed the potential project.

I ended up trading emails with Sir John Starkey and a few months later, I went to the site, stayed a week and drew out the course routing while I was there. We built the facility in three phases: back nine, front nine and the par 3 nine.

That is the short and sweet of it. During the construction phases, I would make a couple of trips over at critical times to review the work.”