Golf should adopt a listed system for older courses

CADDIE'S ROLE:Wentworth is now such a schizophrenic golf course that I could only gape in amazement

THE WEST COURSE at Wentworth was much talked about on tour in the run-up to last week. No matter how the changes had turned out there was so much expectation that making your own untainted assessment was always going to be difficult.

My own first impression was a stunning aerial photograph in this paper last Tuesday as I read the sports pages in the plush caddie-shack set up alongside the driving range.

I thought it was a course that had been revamped in America. I gave it a double take.

No, I was mistaken, it was indeed the 18th hole of the Burma Road, a couple of hundred yards from me.

Let me try to describe the lush, leafy surrounds of possibly the most agreeable residential area anywhere in the world, particularly on a calm and moody May morning. The sports pavilion, an environmentally friendly wooden structure that looks like a modern version of a quaint and elegant Kyoto pavilion, is set close to the caddie’s area.

We could see the Bentleys and other suave motors purring up to the pavilion, dropping off the unhurried members to the gym, swimming pool or tennis courts. The scene was one of a perfectly affluent morning in a leafy Surrey garden.

“Have ye seen it?”

“What do you think?”

From the caddie shack to the lockerroom there was a central theme to the casual conversations: the changes.

Let’s face it, there are not many of us over 30 who embrace change with open arms, least of all a bunch of conservative golfers who have made careers out of repetitive routines. Most of us look forward to revisiting the course and place with which we are familiar. It’s easier that way. Even if a place is referred to as a “dump”, better that it is a familiar “dump” than a new one.

A colleague that made the most sense began his analysis of the course with the story of the empty lot that sits conspicuously beside the 17th green. On it once stood a house that had been a listed building. Controversially, it was demolished.

It prompted my fellow looper to suggest there should be similar strict guidelines for golf courses that are of a certain age, and particularly those built by designers of note who rightly have a respected reputation. Like Harry Colt, the original designer of the Burma Road.

How right he is. A course like the original West at Wentworth is a piece of golfing heritage which really should have been given some more consideration when it was firstly tampered with four years ago and even more so when this year’s changes were made.

Today the course is some sort of hybrid blend that has infiltrated the beautifully British surroundings of the stockbroker belt in Surrey and given us such a schizophrenic golf course that you could only gape in amazement

You see the main contention with the changes from the various people I talked to is that it has lost its identity. With the homogenisation that globalism brings it would seem even more appropriate to keep more aligned to the ideals of the original architect.

It was not the easiest week for Ernie Els, to whom much of the redesign is credited, trying to play on his new creation with the mutterings of discontent echoing around the dense Wentworth foliage.

His original alterations four years ago were greeted with resistance, but time seemed to erase the general complaints.

But when the course was revealed to the tour last week it was time for more remonstrations.

The consensus was that there were a number of very good improvements to many of the greens, but some of them were too small and too severe.

On any course, there is usually something memorable and unique that sets it apart. The back nine on the West used to have three par fives that gave the players chances to dramatically alter the outcome of the tournament in an unpredictable fashion, right down to the 18th.

The nature of a good closing hole is that it should provide ample reward for taking a risk. The 18th now seems to be all risk with no reward. The drama has been taken out of the Burma Road finale, the crowd silenced.

Ernie’s hand may have been tied by an owner whose expertise obviously does not lie in classic golf course architecture.

Thus the very astute suggestion by my colleague in the caddie shack to adopt a listed golf course system before money and ignorance obliterate the wonderful gifts of architectural heritage that we have so fortunately inherited from those who really understood the anatomy of a good golf course.

Fortunately, the members of the Wentworth Club have the classic East and Edinburgh courses left to enjoy among the bluebells, copper beaches and assorted rhododendrons, unscathed by meddling and still very clear about their own identities.