Wallasey Golf Club

Brian Ward - The Double Century Brian completes both the GB&I and England Top 100s at Hankley Common Howzat? is a quintessential cricket-related appeal whereby every batsman who has experienced the cry hopes beyond hope that the umpire will not uphold the bowler’s plea and will instead return a verdict of “not out”. After all, every batsman wants to remain at the crease in order to go on and score a double-century. However, many cricketers (even top professionals) don't manage to score 200 runs in one innings over their entire careers. No golfer wants to card a century, let alone a double-century for their round. A three-figure number on the scorecard represents a bad day at the golfing office, but Brian Ward was overjoyed to achieve a remarkable double-century at Hankley Common Golf Club last month. Just about everyone collects something and Brian, a long-time member of Astbury Golf Club in Cheshire, is no exception. A few decades ago, the keen football supporter set an objective to visit each of the 92 football league grounds in England. Brian completed the quest over an eight-year period, aged 26. More recently he turned his attention to playing golf courses and earlier this year he played his one-thousandth course – Halmstad (Norra) – while on a trip to Sweden. It became obvious to me a few years ago that Brian would become the first member of the Top 100 team to complete the Britain & Ireland Top 100. And so it came to pass at Hankley last month, when Andy Newmarch and I joined Brian and his golfing buddy Andy to celebrate his achievement. But not only did Hankley mark Brian’s GB&I milestone, it also commemorated his completion of the England hundred. The first highly rated course Brian played from our current 2016 England Top 100 list was Wallasey back in 1998 and this classic old links was followed by Delamere Forest, Broadstone and Sandiway in 1999. Eighteen years later, he was able to put the last tick in the box. Ironically, the aforementioned quartet has so far eluded me. A few golfers have played the Britain & Ireland Top 100, but I’m unaware of any who have completed the English hundred. If you’ve played all the best tracks in England, or know somebody who has, please let me know. We already have more than our fair share of ton-up golfers here at Top 100 Golf Courses, but nobody to my knowledge has completed two major Top 100 ranking lists in one day. So what’s Brian going to do next? Some readers may remember the story we published a few months ago, Rudo completes the World Top 100 “Ever” list, which involved conquering more than 300 courses that had been historically listed by multiple sources down the years. Brian now intends to emulate Rudo’s achievement for British and Irish courses and tackle the Top 100 GB&I “Ever” list. We’re still defining the full catalogue of courses, but I’m betting that Brian will be the first person to complete the task. Additionally, Brian intends to continue to travel further afield and aims to play as many of the world's best courses as he possibly can. Brian is the Secretary of the Golf Society of Great Britain and also one of our key panellists, especially when it comes to shaping our biennial English Top 100 rankings, so I asked him to list a few of his favourites. It would be inappropriate to publish Brian’s entire personal list in isolation, but he has been brave enough to share, in no particular order, ten of his favoured English courses: Sunningdale (Old), Swinley Forest, St George’s Hill (Red & Blue), Broadstone, Royal Birkdale, Woodhall Spa (Hotchkin), Royal St George’s, West Sussex, Royal West Norfolk and The Alwoodley. Weather is inevitably bound to play its part in any quest of this type, but remarkably Brian only had to return to replay one course due to bad weather. It was so windy when he first visited Hunstanton that golf trolleys were being blown around like tumbleweed. After only two holes he was forced to retreat to the sanctuary of the clubhouse. A couple of years later he returned to Norfolk and completed Hunstanton in much kinder conditions. If you are trying to emulate either of Brian’s double-century adventures, please click the “Respond to this article” link at the top or at the bottom of this page to share your story. Keith Baxter Editor-in-chief Top 100 Golf Courses

Calling all Northern Golfers The Race to Alwoodley 24th November 2010 Amateur golfers in the North of England will have a brand new matchplay competition to compete in next season. The Northern Matchplay Golf Championship is a season-long tournament initially split into six counties; Cheshire, Cumbria, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland and Yorkshire. There is an Individual and Betterball Pairs competition both played off handicap. The opening round is played over 36 holes on a ‘home & away’ basis so players are assured of at least one round away from their home course. A draw is then made for home advantage in subsequent rounds. To minimise travelling distances golfers will initially compete locally where they will be aiming to reach their ‘county’ final. The winners at each regional final venue will progress to the two-day expenses paid Grand Final at The Alwoodley Golf Club in September 2011 to determine the overall champions of the North. Regional final venues include; West Lancs, Wallasey, Silloth-on-Solway, Seaton Carew, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Pannal, all of which have hosted Open Championship qualifying events. Tournament Director, Edward Battye, said, “To have some of the finest courses in the North of England as regional final venues is a real coup and will certainly give entrants an extra incentive to reach theirs.” Scratch-golfer Battye added, “Whoever wins on the day at each regional final can then expect one of the best golfing experiences they are ever likely to have at Alwoodley.” To enter you must be a male golfer, aged 16 or over on 31st March 2011, with an active CONGU handicap held at a golf club affiliated to one of the above County Golf Unions. The entry-fee represents good value at just £15 per person or £25 per pair. Those interested in entering should log on to www.northernmatchplay.com for more details.

Top 20 Golf Courses in Cheshire 2015 Cheshire Best in County rankings updated Cheshire’s geographical extent is a little smaller than the region we've defined because we align our coverage of this county with the Cheshire Golf Union, which historically includes clubs located in the nearby conurbations of the Wirral and Manchester. Nowadays, there are more than a hundred clubs attached to the male golf union and female golf association in Cheshire. Together, these two governing bodies represent tens of thousands of amateur men and women in the county, with both authorities also operating separate sections for junior and senior golfers. We maintain a Top 20 ranking list for golf courses in the region so, following a recent exercise to reappraise the relative merits of these layouts, we’d now like to present the latest edition of our revised Cheshire chart, where the top six positions remain exactly as they were two years ago. That means Royal Liverpool is still our number 1 course in Cheshire. Host to a dozen Open Championships since 1897, this world-class links is a demanding test, as intimated recently by one reviewer: “It can be flat at times with little definition to the holes. But that itself provides its own challenge. Depth perception is very difficult … strategy and trust to hit your lines is paramount”. Hard on the heels of Hoylake, the old Herbert Fowler-designed course at Delamere Forest is at number 2 in our county listing. The club celebrated its centenary in 2010 and has since engaged architects McKenzie & Ebert to redesign many of the bunkers on the layout and extend some of the tee boxes to keep pace with modern golfing demands. Wallasey, just pipped for the runner up slot, occupies the number 3 position in the Cheshire Top 20. Old Tom Morris originally laid out the links in 1891 but it’s undergone a number of significant redesigns since then, starting with Alex Herd and Alex Hilton at the start of the 20th century. James Braid, Fred Hawtree and J.H. Taylor all carried out work there in the 1920s and 30s, with Donald Steel also contributing three new holes a decade ago. At number 4, Sandiway is a lovely old Ted Ray design which was subsequently altered by Harry Colt in the 1920s then by Fred Hawtree in the 1950s. Located just off the Northwich bypass, it’s an unassuming track with tree-lined fairways routed around a beautiful heathland landscape. Prestbury at number 5 was set out by Harry Colt in the early 1920s and it’s situated around a mile from Macclesfield, where fairways weave across a 140-acre sand-based, free-draining parkland landscape. The last of our non-movers at the top of the table is Stockport at number 6, which Sandy Herd designed in 1905, three years after he won the Open, and he was joined by the Great Triumvirate of Vardon, Braid and Taylor in an exhibition match to mark the official opening of the course. Three courses make upward moves in the top half of the chart: Wilmslow (up one to 7) has been in play since 1903 when the club moved to its present site, Dunham Forest (up four to 8), which is laid out within the Earl of Stamford’s woodland estate, and Mere (up five to 9), a James Braid design that first opened in 1934. Further down the listings, the Harry Colt-designed course at Ringway moves up two places to number 13, Alister MacKenzie’s layout at Reddish Vale climbs three spots to number 15 and both the Cheshire course at Carden Park and the 18 holes at Bramall Park rise one position to number 18 and number 19, respectively. Finally, there’s only one newcomer to the new Cheshire standings and it’s Mottram Hall, where this impressive golf resort is now operated by QHotels. Set within a magnificent 270-acre estate, the course hosted the PGA Seniors Championship on the European Senior Tour in 2013, when Paul Wesselingh won the event by four shots with a 20 under par total score. We’re grateful to everybody in the county who helped with our re-ranking process for Cheshire. To view details of all the courses in our Cheshire Top 20 rankings click the link. If you have extensive experience of playing across the northwest region of England and would like to contribute to our next re-ranking exercise then please email Editor-in-Chief Keith Baxter at keith@top100golfcourses.com. Jim McCann Editor Top 100 Golf Courses