When the GOLF Magazine World Top 100 list came out earlier this year one theme shone through - American courses that had undergone restoration had shot up the rankings. In recent years, courses from LA to New York have gone under the knife and the vast majority have been congratulated on a job well done.

American commentators and the golf architecture community regularly discuss which courses would benefit most from restorative work. This great piece by Andy Johnson considered some high profile candidates for the next wave of restoration.

In contrast, British projects are a little less high profile. There are some exceptions, such as at Woodhall Spa, Moortown and ongoing work at The Addington, but relatively few of the really classic British courses have been touched.

Clubs may be put off by the extravagant sound of a ‘restoration’, and indeed some of the budgets in the US are truly mind-boggling. Upcoming work at Yale is said to be costing $25 million.

Dai Thomas makes the point that a multi-million pound budget isn’t necessarily needed to make significant changes. He say, ‘What many courses need in the first instance is comprehensive tree removal and wider mowing lines. Mowing line work doesn’t really cost much if anything. Tree removal usually does cost quite a bit but once done makes a huge difference’.

Tony Dear, author of ‘The History of Golf in 50 Holes’ worries that we are losing the way with the husbandry of our links courses. He says, ‘In recent years, British links have become narrower and are losing some of their playability. Why? It’s a nasty trend and should stop immediately. British links are unique and special. Don't make them bland tests of straight-ball hitting’.

The homogenisation of our links courses is a worry. I wholeheartedly recommend this piece by architect Ally McIntosh where he laments change for changes sake: ‘Across our courses, classic greens get removed one by one, fairway bunkers are relocated to test only the elite players and quirky holes are done away with because a club might have delusions of grandeur that one day it will need to be fit for Rory, Dustin et al. It all feels a little like designing to standard.’

The cookie cutter approach to our links courses is making them blander and less enjoyable to play for the average golfer. We fell in love with these courses because of their differences, their quirks, the thrill of discovering something new. Committees should remember that next time they are looking for a ‘consulting architect’.

There are precious few good sites left in Britain to build new courses but we have plenty of opportunities to bring courses - both links and parkland - back to their former glories.

I approached some people much more qualified than me to nominate their candidates for restoration. Some courses are famous across the planet, others may not be well known in their own neighbourhood.

A huge thank you to all of those who have contributed to this piece and also to Simon Haines and his incredible library of images from the past. All historic pictures are from Simon’s library unless otherwise stated.

THE ADDINGTON
Words by Mike Clayton
Arguably CDP [Clayton, Devries & Pont] are already working on a course most would pick as one of the very best candidates in the UK for restoration. The Addington suffered from benign neglect for decades but the new owner, Ryan Noades, is committed to restoring Abercrombie’s masterpiece. It’s a brilliant piece of ground and the holes are world-class and wild at the same time. We’re expanding the greens back out to where they were, removing the trees which had encroached too far onto the stage, re-establishing native heather and getting it into first-class condition.

If we nail it, The Addington will again be one of the game’s great treasures.

12th Hole - November 2020 pre CDP work
Photo - Dave Cannon

12th hole November 2021.
Photo - Dave Cannon

GULLANE 1, 2 & 3
Geoff Shackelford
This wonderful place needs the same restoration too many other links now require: a return of animal life to maintain the roughs. Rabbits for the low-growing dense stuff, sheep for the big ticket items. I’ve played Gullane in the wettest and driest years. I’ve seen the difference. In most years with normal rainfall, lost balls destroy the fun here as well as on many other links allowed to get too narrow and too lush.

John Smart, 1899. Research credit - Society of Golf Historians

HAZLEHEAD
Robin Hiseman
Shortly before embarking on a notable career in the USA, Dr Alister MacKenzie built a new course for the Aberdeen local authority in the mossy, rocky and boggy uplands of Hazlehead Park. It was a challenging, but beautiful site, which MacKenzie proclaimed had the potential “to be as good a course as Gleneagles, or even better.”

It was a troubled scheme, beset with construction difficulties and cost overruns, resulting in MacKenzie having a monumental falling out with the local authority as they tempered the undulation and ambition of his original scheme.

Time is a healer and Hazlehead now carries the moniker of the ‘Mackenzie Championship course’. It is a pretty, but modest, public course struggling with the usual issues of tight budgets, poor drainage and overplay. Mackenzie’s routing remains intact and it would be a fabulous base upon which to restyle the course in the acknowledged Mackenzie style.

HUNTERCOMBE
Sean Arble
Willie Park Jr’s Huntercombe opened in 1901. Like most early 20th century designs, trees have invaded what was originally open land and any restoration of Huntercombe would hopefully begin with selected tree clearance throughout the property.

Most prestigious golden age courses exhibited a visual flair due to the bunkering. Huntercombe is no different and could benefit from the restoration of several key bunkers. The thirteen remaining bunkers (some have been converted to hollows) are in the main placed to offer a choice of playing heroically or safely. A restoration would involve enlarging the current bunker on 5, reinstating the three cross bunkers short of the path on 6, reinstating the large bunker covering both 11 & 12 and reinstating the huge cross bunker on 18.

Huntercombe exemplifies concepts which were previously the domain of links golf. Variety, use of natural and man-made landforms and strategic merit are features which made the course justly famous over 100 years ago and continue to delight members and visitors alike today.

MEYRICK PARK
Clyde Johnson
In 1926 Colt and Co reworked two short courses by Tom Dunne into one, and it was a handful of raw photos from this period that drew me to this almost clandestine park in Bournemouth. While the heather has gone, the rugged bunkers neutered, pines choking in, and greens shrunk, the grandiose terrain is still tackled with affront

The first shot is to a tiny punchbowl, shelved out of a valley top. Though the other five par-threes are thankfully less demanding, they are equally enthralling as the 244-yard opener.

Sadly claustrophobic, today’s routing can feel (excitingly) disorientating, you may just wonder how you have reached the once infamous valley climbing the fourteenth.

I guess the locals are happy to keep England’s oldest muni to themselves! Given its public accessibility, this might just be the course that I would choose to ‘restore’ in the British Isles. As it is, Meyrick Park is one for the true architectural aficionados, those that can look past the scruffy edges and appreciate the bones of a layout worth cherishing.

ROYAL ABERDEEN
David Jones
The links at Balgownie has changed a lot since its creation by Archie and Robert Simpson. Take the second hole - recent changes to make it 40 yards longer, with an upturned saucer green doesn’t make for as much fun as the original birdie-friendly shorter hole where you could run the ball up.

The par 3 third hole has had 20 yards added and both a wonderful bunker short and a forgiving backstop taken away. Where’s the fun in that?!

Character has been taken from the course too. The 15th used to have an unusual large bunker in the front with a grass mound in the middle. They got rid of that to be replaced with three pot bunkers that could be on any links course in the land.

There is some hope. Donald Steel pushed up the 12th and 13th greens some fifteen years ago and the club have since softened them so they are more in keeping with the rest of the course. Bringing back more of the ground game, and the fun which is so integral to links golf, could only improve Royal Aberdeen.

ROYAL LYTHAM
Joe McDonnell
Lytham's old bunkers are an obvious thing to highlight, with their wild and random shapes and styles, but the thing that made my eyes really pop was the loss of fairway width since the 40s. I guess we could do this with almost every links course, and especially with those on the Open Rota. But Lytham's narrowing might be the most extreme I've seen. Here's the 15th hole.

ROYAL ST GEORGE’S
Geoff Shackelford
The loss of the blind, heroic shot at the Maiden has stripped this course of a thrilling all-or-nothing shot eradicated from too many links in the name of fairness (Deal also lost one). This course has just about everything except one hole that plays like nothing else in the world of golf. RSG had an equivalent of the Postage Stamp or Road and needs it back.

SANDWELL PARK
DJ Russell
The M5 motorway changed the first few holes of this Midlands Colt course. Over time the trees have grown so much that most of the strategy has disappeared from a selection of holes that would hold their head high in any company if restored sympathetically.

SANDY LODGE
Jasper Miners
This sandy, Vardon designed oasis in clay-based London has changed very little with regards to routing. But the amazing features have evolved and been tamed from the original. This was also the venue for the historic showdown between the Haskell and Gutty. Sandy Lodge was a titan in its day and the appetite for unique architecture and presentation would provide everything a club in London could dream of.

SITWELL PARK
Robin Hiseman
In the early part of his design career, Dr Alister MacKenzie laid out a new course at Sitwell Park, on the outskirts of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. On a severely undulating site he built two radically undulating greens set into a steep hillside, which immediately became beset with controversy and acrimony due to their bold shaping. They didn’t survive for long and were soon levelled out, but not before a local photographer took a couple of shots which ensured their legendary status as the wildest greens ever built.

Generations of golf architects have referred to these photographs and marvelled (or perhaps recoiled) at their fantastical contours. They are arguably the original ‘MacKenzie’ greens, which has become the generic term for any multi-levelled green. In an era when it is possible to recreate an entire ‘lost’ golf course using digital mapping of old photographs, it cannot be too difficult to restore two or three greens on a golf course which still exists. The remnants of MacKenzie’s original greens are still there under a woolly coating of semi-rough and though any restoration would have to take account of modern green speeds, Sitwell Park is arguably the most tantalising restoration project in the whole golfing world.

140 Yards Par 3. Golf Illustrated & Outdoor America, November 1915

SPEY BAY
Robin Hiseman
When laid out by Ben Sayers in the early years of the 20th Century, Spey Bay was a desirable Scottish seaside resort, with a plush hotel and railway station. It eventually lost the rail connection and the hotel burnt down, leaving behind this lonely, disembodied links. What differentiates it from other links is that it is laid out on shingle, rather than sand.

The fairways often follow the half-pipe vales between the ridges and the entire course is an object lesson in micro contouring. It is also brutally exposed to the fearsome storms of the Moray Firth and lost a number of holes to the surf during the 1980s. The necessary redesign produced a handful of inferior replacement holes at the far end of this out-and-back links. Spey Bay is a charming course, but almost entirely overlooked by the golfing world. It could be very special.

ST ANDREWS - THE OLD COURSE
Geoff Shackelford
Too many bunkers are encircled in rough. Too much of the gorse Old Tom burned has been allowed to come back. The aesthetics of the bunkers scream manmade instead of natural. Both Hell and the Road hole greenside bunkers are aesthetic crime scenes. Most of this has happened due to a fear professionals will shoot super low scores that would highlight a lack of equipment regulation. It’s time to name a committee (I know, not ideal) of top architects to provide their thoughts and guidance.

SUNNINGDALE NEW AND OLD
Tim Gallant
Two of the best inland courses in the UK could be so much better with restorations to bring them closer to Colt's original vision for the New and Old. Across the property, scale has been lost with an abundance of trees and bunker shaping/shrinking that has changed over the years. Also, maintenance practices have both courses looking more like finely manicured gardens rather than proper heathlands.

Greens have reduced in size and flattened while fairways have become tighter which, when combined with the aforementioned trees, means the courses, as good as they are, are only a shadow of what they could be.

WALLASEY
Sam Cooper
Wallasey hasn't been unduly meddled with by committees, nor overgrown with trees or gorse. Its poor fortune is historic. After the Second World War, the War Office retained a large section of the original course. Soon after, the local council removed almost 300,000 tonnes of sand from the current fourth and seventeenth fairways to build up the promenade on the adjacent River Mersey.

The result is a links of great contrast. The holes in Wallasey's towering dunes are reminiscent of England's greatest undulating links but newer holes are shoehorned onto the more recently acquired flat land.

If Old Tom Morris, the course's original architect, had the modern parcel of land I wonder if he would have made more economical use of the dune system. Wallasey is a lovely course, and sits alongside any other member of England's Golf Coast - but with a bit of ambition and refurbishment it could be challenging the likes of neighbouring Hoylake and Birkdale as the premier course on that remarkable stretch of coastline.

WENTWORTH EAST
Jasper Miners
The forgotten Harry Colt masterpiece, The East plays second fiddle to The West but is a spectacular routing with vintage Harry Colt diagonal cross hazards and superb use of elevation throughout. The oldest of the two Colts on offer, The East boasts some spectacular highlights, namely the hilltop punchbowl green of the 5th and the par 4 11th is all-world. In the right hands, the string of pearls on 3, 11, 12, and 18 would become some of the most memorable architectural features in the neighbourhood.

WOKING
Jasper Miners
Woking is world-class and the work that is ongoing has only made it better. One can only dream though of a proper, full-blown restoration of Simpson’s 9th and 10th holes and lost features on the 17th. The front nine holes on the low ground have received the lion's share of heather regeneration and tree clearance…one can only hope the other holes will see the same care and attention.