Day 238 - Woburn

All three Woburn courses in
Top 100 in GB

I was fortunate enough today to have been invited to play golf at Woburn - not the Marquess course, which had recently hosted the European Tour event won by Matthew Fitzpatrick, but the Duchess one.  At first, I was disappointed but the starter told us that actually the championship course had been quite badly chewed up by the spectators and the Duchess was certainly in great nick.

Woburn is not easy to get to from Surrey but I was very fortunate that the M25& M1 were behaving, so made it in plenty of time for my 10:15 tee time.  I was playing with Colin, my host from BGL, together with Matthew, our new General Manager at Burhill.  Matthew plays off scratch and Colin off 14, so it was always going to be a tight match.

And tight is the right word as every fairway is tree-lined and any shot vaguely off-kilter gets punished (Jan - you would not have enjoyed it!).  My game was behaving so I managed to hit most fairways and didn't lose a ball. This meant that I was going to be hard to beat and, certainly on the second half, I played at or better than my handicap too and eventually won the game we played: yippee £10 to the good!

After lunching, we had a tour of the Clubhouse and facilities from the Wogurn GM, Jason. It was interesting to contrast and compare with Burhill - some similarities (clubs owned by the aristocracy, 1,000+ members, more than 1 course) and some differences (Burhill older, more traditional with a much more impressive clubhouse, Woburn has catering facilities for groups of 200+) yet many similar challenges.  All in all, a really fun day!

Before leaving, I picked up one more logo ball for my collection - and am already looking forward to going back to play the Duke's and Marquess courses!