We pulled into the RSG car park & faced a steady determined rain as we walked to the ProShop. Once inside things soon picked up. Whilst drying my hair on one of the expensive bag towels for sale, I noticed they had 2 different logo ball options to choose from! One for the club & one for visitors was possibly the reason given. I was an immediate fan of this beguiling combination of golfing tradition with cutting edge commerce. If I’m honest with myself, I think collecting merch is the main reason why I visit all these different golf courses. I find it intoxicating. My passion has little to do with being out in nature, Sharing time with good friends while testing my own shortcomings against an invigorating challenge designed by man & earth’s surface processes. On many occasions, oddly enough when I’m not playing so well, I think of giving up golf & simply writing emails to ProShop’s asking they send me logo balls. The time, money, & frustration saved would be significant. 

Nevertheless, with twice as many logo balls weighing down our bags, we strode towards the first tee on a dopamine high like few others. Fortunately the rain had calmed slightly as we stood next to the starter’s hut, pretending to be less nervous than we were. Moments later as I went looking for my hall down the left rough, it was but a mere drizzle. It remains a mystery how a few droplets here & there somehow adds up to being soaked to the core after 18 holes. The course guide had said to favour the left side on hole 1 but as with many things, I took something positive to the extreme and ruined it. I did at least find my ball and hack it out so that I could get on in 3 & take a 2 putt bogey. The 1st was nothing special - I have high standards - but a sufficient getaway hole rescued by a superior green site. This was a first indication, whilst struggling to open my umbrella as though it was the original enigma machine, that Royal St George’s was indeed an elite course. 

And so it mostly proved for the remaining 17 holes. The course’s characteristic blindness was unveiled via an exciting tee shot at the short dogleg left 2nd. The first short hole comes at the 3rd. Framed into a dune and consisting of 2 distinct tiers, it wouldn’t look out of place at Royal Birkdale (my bad). At the iconic 4th I went around the famous bunker but forgot to fade the ball. I dropped for four in the rough & then somehow lost that ball on my short approach to the green (at which point I discovered yet another psychological benefit of having extra logo balls in my bag). The 5th was a roller coaster containing a blind second shot from a valley over a dune to the green on an anticlimactic flat plateau. The 6th is a true picture postcard par 3 where my playing partner thinned his delicate bunker shot a good 70 yards more than necessary. 

At the 7th we initially had no idea which way to tee off. We realized that routing waters are definitely muddied when a course presents many blind shots - you could be forgiven for thinking you could be required to hit it anywhere. The confusion is compounded because Royal St George’s routing twists & turns like a dragon’s tail. So they could do with some better signage. The 8th wasn’t blind but we couldn’t  tell if it doglegged left or right until we got to the middle of the fairway. The little green site was hidden away down to the right and a par here was a thrill as it was a dangerous second. At the 9th it was a blind bunker that got me, surely karma for admiring it too early following my reasonably struck 9 iron from the middle of the fairway. 

The 10th hole rises up before you in the distance, a straight ahead challenge where holding the infinity green perched atop the hill is the real test. The 11th is a longish par 3, with another 2 tiered green, that looks like it belongs on the St Andrews New Course. The short par 4 at 12 doglegged across a ridge that brought to mind Hunstanton. Doing my best not to make comparisons with Birkdale but other courses are slipping through the safety net. I found another unseen greenside bunker on this hole - but accepted the old cliche about blind shots (i.e. they’re only blind if you’re not tall enough) as I wedged out for a bogey. 

Having exceeded the halfway point, the halfway house (not sure what else to call it) next to the 12th green gives you a moment to pause for breath & reflection. If making use of the facilities I’d also suggest holding your breath & doing your reflecting elsewhere because the toilets were an experience that Glastonbury would be ashamed to be associated with. But of greater importance, the first 12 holes were mostly very good indeed. 

Holes 13 & 14 felt like a relative lull in quality compared to what had gone before. I hoped this wasn’t related to the fact that they rubbed shoulders against the fairways of neighboring Prince’s golf club, because we were due to play there the following day. The 15th was a return to form, containing a unique shaped green with a ski slope on the left hand side that would make Eddie Edwards fake a calf strain. On the day we played the pin position was right up against it - the kind of hole location you tend to see when a club is having one of its “wacky” cross-country days or the green keeping staff simply had too much to drink the night before. I delighted in running my short birdie putt past the hole & back via the hill, but it didn’t help my chances of holing it. 

The final par 3 comes at the 16th &was another gem. From memory the green was half hidden in a dell behind a dune. Hole 17 required a straight drive across yet another extravagantly undulating fairway & then you are faced with an expansive vista at the last. Despite the inviting look back to the clubhouse haven (it had started raining again), I found 18 to be a playing & aesthetic anticlimax, not up to the level of interest of what had gone before. Bethpage Black sprung, uninvited, to mind. Although perhaps offering a nice symmetrical bookend with the first. 

So what to make of Royal St George’s? My first takeaway was that it’s is a fairly quirky course with an idiosyncratic collection of holes. Being such an unorthodox old fashioned design it might initially raise a paradoxical eyebrow or two that it still hosts The Open. However, that question was soon clarified by my second takeaway: It’s is a tough cookie. I only lost 2 balls (both on the same hole) but felt danger & disaster were never too far away. The rough was punishing & you are often crossing fingers that you’ll find the fairways. And when you do hit them, crossing your toes that the ball doesn’t get kicked somewhere less forgiving. The challenge doesn’t let up at the excellent green complexes. They give elite players much to think about - just ask Thomas Bjorn - & offer the rest of us plenty of fun trying to get up & down. 

Royal St Georges is my kind of course as it contains a great variety of unique holes routed over a heaving natural links landscape. If it were a Bob Dylan song, it’d mostly be “I contain multitudes” (with perhaps a few notes of “Blowin’ in the wind” & on the day we played, “A hard rain’s gonna fall”). Each subsequent visit will surely reveal tactical layer & playing pleasure in equal measure. You only get brief glimpses of the sea but also don’t miss it (probably because the hole you’re on at any given time is demanding your concentration like a screaming infant at 3am). 

On the spectrum of what floats my golf boat, Royal St George’s is admittedly right on the edge. Navigating this routing of sharp turns risks a dizzy spell, whilst wrestling with the heaving fairways may induce seasickness. Then you have the constant general anxiety of missing the short grass entirely & having already modest hopes dashed on the rocks of rough despair. Even the pseudo safe haven of a beautiful green complex may prove to be a siren ready to drown your hopes of a good score. I’m not saying it’s a penal course - I never bit off more Sandwich than I could chew - but you do need to concentrate. Come to think of it, perhaps the Penal School of Design design is so named because unlike the Strategic School, you don’t need to think with your head & instead can take a testosterone lead approach? Or maybe that’d be the Heroic School?

In any case, Royal St George’s is one of the “best” courses I’ve played. And despite its challenging nature, also one of my favourites. There exists a unique harmony of art & challenge for which I can’t suggest, at least not based on my one round, any obvious improvements (except perhaps to the toilets at the halfway house, a design flaw that even Tom Doak would struggle to solve). Royal St George’s did enough to confirm for me that its current position as the #1 ranked golf course in England, the best golf country in the known universe, is justified.