Rotherham

Members of Rotherham Golf Club enjoy both a wonderful rolling parkland setting for their golf course and a magnificent old neo gothic building as their clubhouse. The Thrybergh estate is ancient - it was mentioned in the Domesday Book - and the clubhouse dates back to 1814, when it was built by the Fullerton family, who owned the property at that time.

The golf club was established in 1903 and Sandy Herd, the previous year’s Open Champion, was invited to set out a 9-hole course for the founding members. It’s not known when the layout was doubled in size but a match in 1920 involving Herd, J.H. Taylor, James Braid and Abe Mitchell may well have marked the opening of the extended course.

According to the book James Braid and his Four Hundred Golf Courses by John F. Moreton and Iain Cumming, Braid, James Braid revisited the property soon after: “five years later, it was Braid who found himself reconstructing the course, lengthening it to 5,817 yards, bunkering and no doubt constructing alternative or new tees and improving greens.”

Today, the course measures a modest 6,350 yards from the back tees, playing to a par of 70. Feature holes include those around the turn: the bunkerless par four 8th, the signature par three 9th and the first of “the triangle holes,” the par five 10th. Par fours at the 5th and 15th holes attract the lowest stroke index rating on each nine but the toughest hole is kept until last, at the 456-yard 18th, where the fairway doglegs left to the home green.