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Thirty minutes from both Heathrow Airport and Big Ben, The Grove Hotel, in Hertfordshire, imparts a modern twirl to the former longtime home of the Earls of Clarendon.\u00a0 The first house was built on the 300-acre wooded estate during Elizabethan times.\u00a0 In the 18th<\/sup> century, one particular Earl essentially created the notion of the \u201ccountry weekend\u201d house party on the property.\u00a0 Guests included all manner of royalty, including Queen Victoria.\u00a0 Today the family-owned five-star hostelry exudes a decidedly whimsical, anti-corporate stance.\u00a0 Startling modern art (much of it expressing visual puns) adorns 227 richly appointed guest rooms, suites, and other facilities.\u00a0 Check out the five-panel aluminum waterfall at the entrance to the Sequoia Spa.\u00a0 Even the extensive gardens communicate interconnected ideas, repeated rhythms, and a rich, hip, leafy aesthetic that mixes with the old-world architecture like \u2026 well, \u2026 convivial guests at a weekend house party.<\/p>\n Parties of golfers will thoroughly enjoy the Kyle Phillips golf course on site.\u00a0 The 7,152-yard venue follows natural slopes, ridges, and mounds and proffers an afternoon that feels part links, part parkland, part heathland.\u00a0 The lovingly-crafted holes encompass stream crossings, lake avoidances, shaven swales, gnarly humps and hollows, and rugged bunkering en route to sculpted green complexes that are, well, complex; many are set at angles to the approaches and therefore require a deft touch.\u00a0 Boomeranging doglegs turn beneath chestnuts, cedars, and other vertical hazards (trees).\u00a0 Number seven, a simple 150-yard par three may be the money shot here\u2014it plays uphill to an angled green you can only see a sliver of, and which falls off in the front and back.\u00a0 Behind the hole, the welcoming brick fa\u00e7ade of the hotel hints at all manner of apr\u00e8s-golf delights in the spa, restaurants, \u201cbeach\u201d area, and guest rooms.<\/p>\n In the unlikely event that you tire of The Grove\u2019s golf course, several other world top 100 venues lie within a short coach ride: Even the most retiring Earl (or someone staying at his former home) should still be seen strutting among the upper crust at such venerable clubs as Wentworth, Walton Heath, and Sunningdale. The Grove makes for the perfect base from which to reconnoiter these other courses, which maintain a stiff British decorum yet are accessible even to American visitors wearing loud orange golf shirts\u2014as long as your socks are not too short (I am not kidding about this).<\/p>\n Wentworth alone boasts three courses played out of an 18th<\/sup> century Gothic style clubhouse that is as much a white castle full of esteemed pleasures as a place to change your shoes and imbibe a five-star lunch in the posh, stylish dining room.\u00a0 Just remember to doff your hat inside or you may find yourself buying a round for thirsty old members.<\/p>\n Harry Colt designed the East and West courses in the 1920s.\u00a0 Each features demanding carries over vast fields of purple-blooming heather and occasional gorse clumps to narrow fairways.\u00a0 The East Course encompasses a number of diagonal hazards in addition. West has played host to the PGA and World Match Play Championships.\u00a0 John Jacobs, Gary Player, and Bernard Gallacher collaborated to create the parkland Edinburgh Course in 1990.<\/p>\n West, the premier layout, is also known as the Burma Road course because the overgrown fairways were cleared by prisoners at the end of WWII, and a British officer commented, \u201cLet this be their Burma Road.\u201d Among the best holes is number 13, a 437-yard par four requiring a right-side tee shot and an approach lofted over trees and bunkers, with no place to bail out.\u00a0 The course finishes with long, back-to-back par fives that should further prepare you for a visit to the oak paneled Burma Bar overlooking East\u2019s 18th<\/sup> green.\u00a0 Seed merchant Samuel Ryder began a long history of trans-Atlantic contention in the bar with an idea for a tournament that still bears his name.<\/p>\n The expanses of lovely, tangling gorse at Wentworth only seem epic until you encounter the two courses at nearby Walton Heath, laid out by Herbert Fowler just after the turn of the century (the previous century, that is).\u00a0 Wentworth has been a favorite of British press and politicians (including former member Winston Churchill) for decades.\u00a0 The legendary James Braid was the club professional for 45 years.<\/p>\n The sandy golf terrain carved from heather, gorse, and bracken is open and mostly treeless (with the exception of occasional pine, birch, and oak) and routed across a high rise, thus wind is a factor on both the Old and New courses.\u00a0 Members say that the New is two strokes easier.<\/p>\n Wide, deep bunkers with steep faces draped in blooming heather recall links hazards, and the turf is firm and fast.\u00a0 Famed golf writer Bernard Darwin wrote of Walton Heath, \u201cIt has something of the fierceness and defiance which belongs to the sea.\u201d\u00a0 Writing of the Old Course he also said, \u201cI know of no sterner finish than that provided by the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth.\u201d\u00a0 He might have mentioned, too, that accurate driving is the key to carrying vast oceans of heather, but even great drives will set up deceptive short pitches to the large greens.\u00a0 The 7,462-yard venue begins with a par three\u2014of 235 yards\u2014 followed by a 475-yard par four.\u00a0 The course finishes with a comparatively short par four of just over 400 yards with a humongous cross bunker parked lengthwise in the fairway.<\/p>\n While in the neighborhood of great British inland courses, you\u2019d be remiss to miss Sunningdale, with Willie Park\u2019s Old Course (from 1901) and the brash, upstart New Course laid out by Harry Colt in 1923.<\/p>\n Park\u2019s longer-standing layout is a bit like Napoleon: short but deadly.\u00a0 103 bunkers mine fairways lined by pine, birch, oak, heather, and manicured hedges.\u00a0\u00a0 Landing zones are rife with grassy knolls and proffer a plethora of shot options.\u00a0 Bobby Jones once commented that he wished he could take the course home with him.\u00a0 Favorite holes here include #2, a 489-yard downhill par four with a blind tee shot and a downhill blind shot to a green that reveals only a glimpse of flag and no view of actual putting surface. Number six presents an island fairway barely floating in a sea of heather.\u00a0 Even 273-yard number nine is dangerous, but is followed by the traditional sausage sandwich at a lovely little halfway house. The first nine plays steadily uphill, so fortified by sausage the return feels downright festive with relief (if also a bit in need of a nap).\u00a0 The 6,627-yard layout concludes beneath the famous Sunningdale oak.<\/p>\n Colt\u2019s New Course is considered more rugged, with less bunkering and fewer trees on its 6,729 yards.\u00a0 The contoured greens have a particular talent for shrugging off mis-hit approaches.\u00a0 Playing both in one day\u2014with a bracing clubhouse lunch in between\u2014is one of the singular pleasures of British golf, and will leaving you feeling if not like an Earl, than at least most Frankly glad to be there.<\/p>\n Save the Wales<\/strong><\/p>\n The country of Wales is to England what the Oregon Territories once were to, for example, Philadelphia and New York: which is to say, beautiful, unspoiled terrain that looks a lot like land now sporting major cities once did before it grew crowded and over-developed.\u00a0 While finding the same level of refined luxury as at The Grove may be difficult (but not impossible: see Celtic Manor, below), the point of taking the several-hour detour to cross the Severn Estuary into Wales is to be transported to an earlier time.\u00a0 Some say that golfing Wales today is what golfing Scotland was like fifty years ago.\u00a0 Expect great, natural, uncrowded golf courses full of locals, and simple, hearty clubhouse pub fare washed down with excellent lager in gorgeous, rolling country where you\u2019ll be fully unable to read signs, menus or written communications of any sort.<\/p>\n The 1400-acre Celtic Manor Resort, in Coldra Woods, is a fine place to begin a limited incursion into Wales.\u00a0 Just three hours from London and two from The Grove, this massive five-star American-style resort has everything, including three golf courses, one of which will host the Ryder Cup in 2010.\u00a0 Yet, surprisingly, that\u2019s the least inspired of the golf offerings, exuding a corporate feel that belies the fact that it was essentially designed by committee\u2014or re-designed, as a perfectly lovable Robert Trent Jones II course (called Wentworth Hills) already occupied the grounds. European Golf Designs built nine new holes across the floor of the Usk Valley and redesigned nine from Jones\u2019s course to create a massive, muscular, but wholly exhausting 7,493-yard par-71 track.\u00a0 Nine holes feature water.<\/p>\n When you play a hole that you love on this course it was probably one of the original holes designed by Jones and imbued with risk\/reward characteristics rather than constructed merely to award length and strength.\u00a0 The par threes actually turn out to be quite playable, while many other holes will elicit the scribbling of the dreaded 7x on your scorecard.\u00a0 Fourteen is the identified signature hole, with lakes on both sides of the fairway and an angled green with a narrow entrance creaking open between sand to the right and water to the left.\u00a0 Although many courses claim that while playing them you\u2019ll use every club in the bag, on the impossibly demanding Ryder Cup Course I found this to be nearly true of just the first hole.<\/p>\n I much preferred RTJ Sr.\u2019s Roman Road Course, featuring delicious elevation changes, ravines, lakes, trees, streams, and gigundo bunkers.\u00a0 Several dramatic descents characterize the front nine, while the back is simply twisty and interesting.\u00a0 The course plays to a par of 70 over a tad more than 6,500 yards.\u00a0 One of my favorites was number 11, 185 yards flush downhill to a green surrounded by mounds of rough and a bunker short of the dastardly, sloping green.\u00a0 The par-69 Montgomerie course, with deep pot bunkers, wide valley views, and a linksish pedigree, fills out the golf dance card.<\/p>\n No trip to Celtic Manor is complete, however, without venturing down the road an hour or so to Royal Porthcawl, one of the true links wonders of the British Isles\u2014and the place where they should have scheduled the Ryder Cup.\u00a0 Holes on the 6,829-yard beauty point in every direction, which is unusual for a links course and proves a factor given the wind (making club selection as much a guess as a science).\u00a0 The lack of massive dunes here allows you to see the foamy ocean from every hole.\u00a0 Also unusual are several heathland holes routing across a high plateau above the Bristol Channel.\u00a0 Henry Colt and Tom Simpson are largely responsible for the current design, which is gorgeous, sublime, and a refreshing tonic to playing over-designed American layouts.\u00a0 Royal Porthcawl is just pure, spotted with perfect pot bunkers and sweeping curves framed in fescue.\u00a0 Holes one through three follow the shore and require long carries from the tee and approaches to greens located close to the sea.\u00a0 The four closing holes average 450 yards in length, and the eighteenth is a rollicking downhill roller coaster.\u00a0 Twelve overnight rooms are available in the clubhouse, which is drooling distance from the beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"F_Grove_10x6\"](\"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/jeffwallach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/01\/F_Grove_10x6-1024x682.jpg\" "\\"F_Grove_10x6\\"")
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