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.

The son of a barrister, Fowler was born in north London and educated at Rottingdean then Grove House School, Tottenham before becoming a partner in a private bank in the West Country. Bernard Darwin described him as ”an erratic genius… perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects and gifted with an inspired eye for the possibility of a golfing country.”

Unlike most of his peers, he did not attend university and his post-school education appears to have consisted of several tours to foreign countries, visiting Germany, France and Australia. In December 1878, he joined the newly established firm of Fox Bros. Fowler & Co. Bank, relocating to Taunton in Somerset.

Soon after arriving there, he took up horse riding and became a member of both the local gun club and archery club. He was also made a Justice of the Peace then served for six years as a town councillor before his election as Mayor of Taunton in 1892. Two years earlier, he had married Ethel Mary Brand, daughter of a wealthy merchant and chairman of the National Telephone Company.

He excelled at cricket, playing first class matches for Essex, Somerset and MCC. His batting record was 905 runs in 49 innings at an average of 18.46 and his record as a bowler was 23 wickets at an average of 22.65 runs so he was certainly a useful player.

Standing 6’ 3½” tall and weighing 15-stone, he was a big hitter and is reputed to have powered the ball more than 150 yards over the old Lord’s pavilion whilst playing for Somerset against the MCC in 1882. In that same match, he took a “hat-trick” of three wickets in consecutive balls and claimed four wickets in three overs for eight runs. When it was his team’s turn to bat, he scored 23 in six hits, with one of the sixes off bowler George Hay clearing the ground.

Fowler was introduced to golf at Royal North Devon when visiting nearby Bideford on banking business in 1879 and he became a club member – winning the Prince of Wales Medal two years after joining – but cricket remained his number one sporting pursuit, along with hunting and shooting in the off season.

When his cricketing days were over, Fowler took golf a lot more seriously. He practiced assiduously at Westward Ho!, quickly getting down to scratch, and before long he was a member of the R&A and serving on its Greens Committee. He placed 26th in the Open of 1900, reached the last 16 of the Amateur Championship the following year, then won the R&A’s top singles match play handicap competition, the Queen Victoria Jubilee Vase, in 1902.

Fowler was chosen to represent England – alongside the likes of Bernard Darwin, Harold Hilton and John Ball –against Scotland in the second amateur international match, held at Muirfield in May 1903. The Scots had won the inaugural event at Hoylake by 32 holes to 25 but the format was changed to nine singles contests over 36 holes of match play. Fowler, playing at number eight, won his match 6&5, with England recording a victory margin of five matches to four.

On the domestic front, Fowler was forced to sell his house in Taunton due to the collapse of the family-owned bank but he remained in debt to his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Cosmo Bonsor, who just happened to hold the rights to some land at Walton Heath, near Epsom. In order to pay back Bonsor, Fowler agreed to survey the heath with a view to creating a golf course – not that he had ever done so before or received training for that purpose.

In Walton Heath Golf Club’s centenary publication, 

, author Phil Pilley writes: “imagine the scene as Fowler – Norfolk knickerbockered, tall on his horse, generously moustached – begins his survey and searches for hidden merits in the wilderness that may help him achieve his ambition and rescue him from the abyss of bankruptcy... Yes, a fine course could be created here. That was Fowler’s report and the Bonsors, probably in August 1902, commissioned him to go ahead.”

In West Surrey Golf Club’s centenary book, 

, author Derek Markham remarks as follows: “Fowler’s reputation was established by Walton Heath when it opened in 1904. He had painstakingly explored the 600-acre site, completely covered by heather between two and three feet high, on horseback. Having started with the placement of two short holes, he calculated the optimum sites for the other greens and fairways using many of his individual theories on course design.”

Fowler became managing director and secretary of the club in 1904 – just as 

 arrived from Romford to become the head professional, a position he would hold for another forty-six years – but his duties at Walton Heath didn’t prevent him working on other projects and by the start of the Great War, he had laid out or modified another eight courses, including Delamere Forest in Cheshire and the Royal Automobile Club in Surrey.

 and arrived in New York in 1920 to set up an office in the United States. On the west coast, Fowler designed a few courses around the San Francisco area and remodelled several other Californian layouts – including the alteration of Pebble Beach’s 18th from a par four to a par five hole – but he’s probably best known in the US for setting out the course at Eastward Ho! on the eastern seaboard at Cape Cod.

Tom Simpson and Herbert Fowler were joined by J. F. Abercromby and Arthur Croome in partnership for a few years and, by the end of the 1920s, the company was responsible for creating, adding to modifying a multitude of courses in Britain and the Continent of Europe. While Simpson worked mainly abroad, Fowler travelled far and wide at home, remodelling courses such as Aberdovey, Cruden Bay and Royal Lytham & St Annes.

Architect Ian Andrew had this to say on Fowler’s style: “His architecture was not full of grand flourishes and would be best described as understated. He kept his tee sites simple with many being on native grade. He used his bunkers sparingly, concentrating on key strategic locations on a relatively flat site like Walton Heath. He let the land become the challenge when he had great natural terrain to work with and the rolls and undulations stood out more than the features that he created.

His greens were often right on the natural grade and often simply extensions of the fairway. Others were carefully placed on small rises to add some additional difficulty. The one thing he never seemed to do was to add mounding or other backings to add definition, he chose instead to embrace what was always there.”

Financial problems were never too far away from Fowler. He invested in a myriad of commodity and mineral ventures around the world and at one time was even rumoured to be involved in the arms trade. In 1928, he was made bankrupt, with assets of only £634 against liabilities of more than six and a half thousand pounds.

Had Fowler been an ordinary member of Walton Heath, he would have been expelled from the club under its rules because of his financial situation but, as he was the managing director, he continued in his paid position as if nothing had happened, allowing him to vote on financial and other matters, as well as retain the use of a room in the club’s dormy house.

He chaired his last committee meeting in July 1938, and at the age of 83 attended his final directors meeting on 3 September that year, the day that war was declared. He transferred to a nursing home a few weeks after this, where he died in 1941, leaving an estate of £365-8s-3d.

“God builds golf links and the less man meddles the better for all concerned.”

“Golf course designing is one of those businesses which is difficult to put down on paper. It is mostly a question of imagination and long experience, and making the best of the features of every piece of land one comes across.”

A Matter of Course: The life of William Herbert Fowler 1856-1941

“William Herbert Fowler was no ordinary man. He threw himself enthusiastically into all manner of sport in an era when Britain developed and codified the rules of many games. A late starter in golf, he achieved great heights in the game. He indulged in the Victorian field sports of hunting, shooting, and fishing. Indoors, he became a top billiards player.

He took an active part in the administration of the sports which he had played with distinction. He sat on committees of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club (and) as Chairman of the Somerset County Cricket Club he did much to ensure that club’s emergence and survival. He managed to find time to serve on the Billiards Control Council.

Fowler came from a family prominent in the Quaker community. His parents belonged to a wide network of wealthy and successful Quaker industrialists and bankers. He served two terms of office as Mayor of Taunton (and) his hobbies included horticulture and breeding a splendid herd of Guernsey cows. In both fields he won prizes on a national scale.

The ferocity with which he bludgeoned the golf ball brought to mind the aggression he displayed as a batsman in his younger days. He represented England against Scotland with distinction, and for a period of time was joint holder of the record score around the Old Course at St Andrews. It did not take him long to be invited to join a committee of the R&A.

Fowler was able to combine his duties as Managing Director of Walton Heath with a successful and lucrative course architecture practice. To his achievements in the UK he added a number of projects in the USA in the 1920s. The rewards enabled him to maintain a reasonable lifestyle. Sadly, he lived way beyond his means and made several ill-judged investments. Bankruptcy and marital breakdown followed. He died in poverty.

In many ways a colossus of his era, he lived life to the full as a Victorian sportsman and country squire before falling on hard times. A subsequent successful career which brought him international recognition was ruined by financial misjudgement and misfortune, but it is right that he should be remembered today for his lasting contribution to golfing history.”

From Donald Steel: “ Nearly every golf course architect can spin an unlikely yarn about how he came to seize the opportunity to do what every golfer would love to do, design golf courses – great golf courses. Few were ever trained with such an ambition in mind. However, the initiation of Herbert Fowler is as zany as any.

Thrust in at the deep end, he built 36 holes at Walton Heath although, with him, it was more a case of familiarising himself with the role and offering himself for it. By preferring to keep things in the family, Sir Cosmo Bonsor, Founder of the Club, chose his brother-in-law for the enviable task thereby igniting the spark of Fowler’s inventiveness that proved to be a lifelong flame.

It won him the soubriquet ‘The Erratic Genius’, Golf is forever in his debt.”

From Frank Pont: “Herbert Fowler must surely rank as one of the most underappreciated of golf architects. Many of us will have heard of Harry Colt, Alister Mackenzie and Tom Simpson, but a lot fewer will have heard of Fowler. That is both unfortunate and unfair, since the legacy that he has left behind for us is as impressive as it is important.

If there is one thing that makes Fowler stand out most relative to his peers, it is the fact that all his courses look quite different. Although one can see a central DNA residing within the body of his work, there is no such thing as a single ‘Fowler Style’. Not only did his architecture evolve over time, it was also very much dictated by the environments in which he worked.

When I compare his design principles to modern architects, I notice two aspects that are very different.

First, like many of those working in the golden age of golf architecture, he did not have equipment to move large amounts of soil. This meant that the devising of a good routing was even more important in those days than it is now. In stark contrast to many of those working today, Fowler’s golf courses seem to be literally draped on to the landscape.

Second, even though he had a set of principles that he usually followed, at their heart, his courses have different characters, because he lets the specifics of each site determine the look and the feel of what he was building. In that respect, Fowler was perhaps the first real minimalist in the world of golf course architecture.”

Heather and Heaven: Walton Heath Golf Club 1903-2003

 by Phil Pilley (chapter 2, “The Erratic Genius: Herbert Fowler transforms a wilderness” and chapter 21, “The Success and Sadness of Herbert Fowler”) published in 2003.

Playing Through: West Surrey Golf Club’s first 100 Years

 by Derek Markham (chapter 5 is entitled simply “William Herbert Fowler”) published in 2009.

 by Derek Markham, published by Makham and Truett 2021.


In Walton Heath Golf Club’s centenary publication, author Phil Pilley writes: “Imagine the scene as Fowler – Norfolk knickerbockered, tall on his horse, generously moustached – begins his survey and searches for hidden merits in the wilderness that may help him achieve his ambition..."

Herbert Fowler

Herbert Fowler was introduced to golf at Royal North Devon when visiting nearby Bideford on banking business in 1879 and he became a club member, winning the Prince of Wales Medal two years later.

Hawtree is the longest continuous practice of golf course construction and design on record. Started by 

 in 1912, the firm was then managed by his son Frederick William Hawtree when he joined the firm in 1938. Grandson 

 entered the family business in the early 1970s, taking over operations a decade later.

Educated first at Tonbridge School in Kent then Queen’s College, Oxford, where he read modern languages, Fred immediately became involved in his father’s design firm upon graduation, before World War II suddenly intervened. He served with the Royal Artillery in Indonesia, spending the last few years of the conflict as a Japanese prisoner of war.

The construction part of the Hawtree company was closed down when Fred Senior passed away in 1955, allowing his son to concentrate fully on golf course design under the new Hawtree & Son banner. During the next twenty-five years, around eighty new courses were completed by the company across four continents.

The firm is probably best known during this period on the domestic front for renovations made to Royal Liverpool and Royal Birkdale, though the revamp of the Hillside course next door to Birkdale is also high on the list of major Hawtree achievements.

Fred expanded the firm’s reach into new overseas markets, collaborating with Donald Harradine on a couple of courses in Switzerland and venturing into France and Belgium to work on substantial 36-hole projects at Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche and Royal Waterloo.

He also picked up other occasional European commissions in Spain, Portugal and Germany, as well as adding new courses on either side of the border in Ireland at Westport, County Mayo and Malone in Belfast.

One-off assignments in further flung countries such as El Salvador, Morocco and Zimbabwe were also completed and Fred’s designs at the Country Club of Johannesburg (late 1960s) and Plettenberg Bay (late 1970s) are still highly regarded today.

He was assisted in the early 1970s by his partner A.H.F. Jiggens, known as “Jigg,” who had previously worked as an engineer and planning officer at the City of Chester. Jiggens would go on to hold office at the British Golf Greenkeepers’ Association.

Fred’s son, Martin Grant Hawtree, also joined the family firm in 1973, having completed degree courses at the Universities of East Anglia and Liverpool, and he took over the running of the practice in 1984. Before Martin’s arrival, the Hawtree name was well known in Great Britain & Ireland and on the continent of Europe but he has since extended the firm’s horizons into Canada and Australia.

, writes about Fred’s latter years as follows: “In a similar vein to Geoffrey Cornish, Hawtree reduced his design workload while adapting to advancing senior years. An excellent substitute lay in waiting; the all-encompassing tasks of research and writing.”

Fred Hawtree died in September 2000 at his home in Woodstock, Oxford.

Fred W. Hawtree's biography at the European Institute of Golf Course Architects is as follows:

“Fred was noted for his phenomenal energy and industry and apart from designing many new courses and travelling extensively across the world he also ran and developed the Addington Court Public Courses in Surrey during this period.

Like his father before him Fred was a very enthusiastic supporter of the Greenkeepers’ Association, which his father founded in 1912, and Fred himself was a long standing Vice President of the British Golf Greenkeepers’ Association.

 and regularly contributed editorials between 1960-74. During the 1960s and 70s he served on the English Golf Union Council and Executive and also on the Golf Development Council and Executive until its winding up in the 1980s.

He was a founder member in 1971, and later President, of the British Association of Golf Course Architects, which was the first attempt in this country to establish a profession of golf course architects.

For many years he served as a private member on the board of the Sports Turf Research Institute at Bingley and was also a member of the Turfgrass Advisory Committee.

In his later years Fred Hawtree was a prolific writer not only for magazine publications but also books and other literary works. His publications include:-

The Golf Course, Planning, Design, Construction & Maintenance”

Triple Baugé, Promenades in Medieval Golf” 

Aspects of Golf Course Architecture I, 1889-1924, an Anthology”

Aspects of Golf Course Architecture II, 1924-1971, an Anthology”

In 1989 he received the National Turfgrass Council’s award for his outstanding contribution to the turf grass industry. In 1996 he received the silver medal of the British Institute of Golf Course Architects and was made an honorary member of the Institute in 1998. He was awarded a distinguished honorary membership of the British and International Greenkeepers’ Association in 1999.”

 published posthumously by Rhod McEwan in 2016.

Fred W. Hawtree

Fred W. Hawtree was a founder member and later President of the British Association of Golf Course Architects, which was the first attempt in the UK to form a golf course architecture profession.

Somerset

England

Major Frank Newton was the driving force behind the establishment of Taunton & Pickeridge Golf Club, founded in 1892. The Major played his golf at Burnham & Berrow and was fed up with the lengthy journey to the links, so he commissioned his friend – Herbert Fowler – to lay out nine holes across ground formerly used for lime mining and sheep grazing. Fowler was one of the club’s founding members.

Fowler and his associate Tom Simpson added nine further holes in 1925. This course remained in play until the late 1950s when further land was made available and Fred Hawtree remodelled the layout.

The course starts rather dully until you reach the 5th where the ground aspect on the tee of this short par five changes with a drive across rumpled mine workings. You may be forgiven for thinking you’re walking across links land as you approach the stroke index one’s 7th green. Old mine workings again must be avoided on the one-shot 8th where short is not advisable.

Driving off adjacent to the halfway house at #9 (the longest hole on the card) in no way prepares you for what lies ahead. The fairway undulations are simply remarkable and the bunkerless greensite with its depressed trench to the right is genius. This hole is more akin to a duneless Burnham than an inland Taunton and Pickeridge.

Mine workings continue to provide character on the next few holes, exemplified by the approach to the cunning green complex at #11 which is set prettily within wooded surrounds at the northernmost point of the property. Fairway undulations continue at the two-shot bunker-free 12th and at #13.

Heading for home, the layout continues strongly with two dogleg left par fours, one short at #15 and one long at #17, before the course finishes uninterestingly, as it started, at the innocuous short par four home hole.

Taunton & Pickeridge

Orchardleigh

Britain & Ireland

Founded in 1892, the first nine holes at Taunton & Pickeridge Golf Club were laid out by Herbert Fowler across ground formerly used for lime mining and sheep grazing – Fowler was one of the club's founding members.