Atop this year’s bucket-list dreams was getting a chance to play at Brancaster (Royal West Norfolk) at high tide. The spring tides bring with them some extra oomph, transforming many of the outer holes into a series of dramatic carries across the water. Huge thank you to the club for making this one happen. We managed to stay in the club’s recently transformed dormy lodging the night before, and then head out at first light so we could time things right. Luckily the weather played ball too! Brancaster is not just one of the most enjoyable links experiences in the [...]

Golf course historian Simon Haines and course architect Joe McDonnell (McDonnell & Cooper Design) take us back to 1913, a decade before Tom Simpson was commissioned to build an 18-hole course at Blackwell. At this point in the club’s early history, Harry Colt had been tasked with transforming a rudimentary 9-hole layout, played since 1893, into something more fitting for the needs of its members. This is a lost chapter in the story of Blackwell. Over time, the details of Colt’s original work have faded, but Simon and Joe have worked tirelessly to reconstruct what Colt designed when he only [...]

The Sefton Coast has suffered some of the most dramatic coastal erosion in Britain over the last half-century – and Formby Golf Club has felt it firsthand. In the early 1980s, the club lost its seaside holes to the tide. We caught up with consultants Sam Cooper and Joe McDonnell to uncover where those holes once lay and how the land has changed since. Donald Steel later rerouted the course, adding his name to a remarkable lineage of architects – Braid, Taylor, Hawtree, Colt, and now Cooper & McDonnell – who’ve each added their touch to a layout that feels [...]