IT IS early morning at Wentworth and four friends are nervously tying the laces on their golf shoes, checking they have enough balls and practising a few swishes before stepping on to the 1st tee of the famous West Course, the stage for the World Match Play next weekend.
These are no scratch players; three of them don’t even have a handicap in single figures and they are not members of the Wentworth Club. But during the week, Joe and Josephine Public are allowed to walk the fairways next to the homes of the rich and famous for £285 for a round in the summer or £115 in December. All they need is a handicap below 20 for men or 24 for women.
We sent four average-ability club golfers to test out the course. Two, Magnus Cohen, a 19-handicapper coming back to the sport after five years of playing very rarely, and Craig Tregurtha, who has a handicap of five, had played the course once before, although Tregurtha was still scarred by his earlier experience of slipping from one over par after eight holes to a score in the mid-80s after a halfway stop for two sausage baguettes. “The extra weight disturbed my swing,” he protested.
The two other members of the four-ball both played off 16. Clive Petty had played the East Course before but like Wendy Showell, his playing partner, this was his first time on the Burma Road.
After their first shots, bragging rights belonged to the lady golfer. Tregurtha speared his three-wood into the trees on the right, Petty’s drive did its impression of Arthur Scargill — “a nice strike but veered wildly to the left” — and Cohen’s ball settled in the left rough. Showell, however, found the fairway, although she said that the blind first shot from the ladies’ tee beside the putting green was intimidating.
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Thereafter good shots followed bad shots as the players took in all the flora and hazards that Wentworth has to offer. Showell, a member at The Addington in Croydon, was captivated by the seclusion of the holes, hemmed in by the high pines, but found the rough too punishing. “It just clung on to the club, the average golfer would find it hard to recover from there,” she said.
Petty (motto: “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member”) said he’d have been glad even to find the rough given the number of times he was in the trees.
Cohen felt that he was unlucky, narrowly missing birdie putts at the 2nd and the 18th and almost chipping in at the 17th, but elsewhere his short play let him down, taking five strokes to hole out from off the 9th green after chipping into a bunker.
Sometimes the course’s guidebook was misleading. At the 4th, Cohen was told that “an accurate drive over the brow of the hill, finishing short of the ditch will set up a probable birdie”. After a horrid tee-shot he amended it to “a pull into the trees finishing no more than 50 yards from the tee will set up at least a double- bogey”.
All the players found the length of the course tough, particularly as it was drizzling, and the greens too fast but it didn’t take away from a pleasant experience. Only Tregurtha, a member at Mentmore Club in Bedfordshire who has played such prestigious courses as St Andrews, Royal Lytham and Walton Heath, could pick up birdies, holing a 15-foot putt at the 10th and chipping the ball dead at the last.
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There was a bonus at the 5th, at least for the three men in the group. While the local celebrities — Bruce Forsyth, Sandy Lyle et al — stayed away, our four-ball were startled by a buxom Swedish-looking lady power-walking across the fairway. Petty was so invigorated by the sight that he hit his five-iron pin-high. He might not have broken par, but this was one birdie at Wentworth that would have a lasting effect.