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Welcome to Swinley Forest Golf Club The Golfing Bucket List of World Top 100 Courses Continues Wednesday 29 May – Golf at Swinley Forest Golf Club. What a start to the day – Awoke to a screaming fire alarm at 7.30am. Ran out the door half dressed – GG clutching his shoes and looking for his man bag, arrived in the foyer with all the other guests all looking as stunned as we were. When the alarms ceased we were told that a guest had sprayed the bathroom heavily with deodorant and that had set off the alarms – well I guess the good thing was that it proved the alarms worked but it was a mad am start.
Off to Swinley Forest Golf Club located in Great Windsor Park at Ascot – yes the big racing centre and there were lots of horse trails for the horsey people to do their riding. In fact the Golf Club address was Bodens Ride. Thankfully the GPS found the course for us as we had no hope of finding the hidden driveway. We arrived at the security gates which magically let us in to the lovely grounds and club house. The staff were amazingly helpful and generous
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Golfers looking forward to a great day – nothing was too much for them.
Swinley has a bit of a history of being a different kind of club. It was set up by Lord Derby who was a disenchanted member at Sunningdale. His wife was a great golfer but Sunningdale’s rules stated that women be not allowed to play over the links. When Lord Derby complained about this to King George V, the King told him to set up his own club and he offered Derby land in Great Windsor Park with the rent being 1 peppercorn. Now worth millions!! So Derby got the architect of Sunningdale, Harry Colt, to design Swinley Forest and its first golfers were the aristorcracy, senior members of the military and well as women golfers. Until the 1980.s the course had no scorecards, no club captain, no competitions and the holes were not rated. This has all changed and now Swinley is regarded as a World Top 100 course.
The course was a beautiful parkland course, wide fairways, not so many bunkers and even though it was set in a forest of trees, the trees never came into play. Of course there was a lot of heather to deal with
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Beautiful club house and that made it tough. We were going well until the mizzle started on the third and by the 10
th mizzle had turned to full on rain and we were soaked. Our wet weather jackets kept us dry but our gloves, club grips, caps, and shoes were soaked. Talk about getting a wet butt at golf. Interestingly the wetter we got, the better our golf became and we finished the round in fine spirits but very wet. Both of us found this course amazing because it was so enjoyable to play. The Par 3s are outstanding, different and really tough. But when you hit a good shot it felt like a great shot and that is good feeling in golf.
When we got back to the club house we used the changeroom facilities to have a hot shower, warm up and get into dry clothes for lunch. Swinley was a lovely course, challenging but fair and a great day out. The pictures tell the story!!
Cheers L & G
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