THIS GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND

The abundance of high-quality links and heathland courses in the UK&I means parkland layouts are often overlooked. Jeremy Ellwood attempts to put that right...

- Jeremy Ellwood

When it comes to the UK&I’s varied golf course portfolio, then despite the famous quote – with specific reference to England – from Jerusalem in our headline here, the preference of many golfers is the quite often less green collection of premier links courses we are fortunate enough to find dotted all around our coastline.

Many… but far from all, which is perhaps no surprise given the number of world-class links does sometimes distort the reality of the type of course most prevalent within these shores, which is unequivocally parkland. Despite Golf Monthly’s current Top 100 course rankings featuring 64 links courses, 25 heathland layouts, one clifftop cracker and a mere ten parkland beauties, for most UK&I golfers, it is that final type on which they play the vast majority of their golf.

I should confess from the outset that I count myself very firmly in the links camp when it comes to personal preference, but many are less fond of the seaside game, put off to varying degrees by the sometimes unplayably firm fairways and greens, the magnetic and cavernous pot bunkers, the undulations and humps that can test your patience to the limit and the kind of winds that make your ball dance around like a hyperactive Michael Flatley. We’ve devoted many pages to extolling the virtues of links golf during my time at the magazine, but far fewer to parkland golf, so this month we’re flipping the focus for once to give the parkland version of our great game a little more love.