We walk to the very brink of destruction without knowing it, for there is nothing particular to mark the drive; we have but to hit moderately straight, as it appears, over a flat and somewhat muddy space towards a bunker in the distance. Then as we walk up to the ball the full horror of our situation bursts upon us. We have to pitch over a bunker straight in front of the green, but that is mere child’s play, and only the beginning of our task. On the left-hand side, eating its way into the very heart of the green, is another bunker, very deep and shored up by precipitous black timbers, and the very slightest pull on our approach shot will land us in it. The obvious thing to do would appear to be to push our approach out to the right at any cost, but that will not do either, for on a bank on the right hand side grows a perfect thicket of thorn bushes, where there is very snug lying for the ball and great scope for the niblick. It is surprising and rather humiliating to find how difficult it is to play a perfectly ordinary, straightforward mashie pitch, if only there are enough difficulties to strike terror into the soul. Were there more holes like this, the reproach implied in the term ‘a drive and a pitch’ would very soon disappear.
From Liverpool Street Station the municipal golfer of London takes his way either to Chingford, where he plays in a red coat under the auspices of the Corporation, or to Hainault Forest, where the County Council has recently made a playground for him. The best known, however, and probably the best of these Essex courses is Romford, which was for a good many years the home green of the great Braid. Indeed even now ‘J. Braid (Walton Heath)’ looks just a little unfamiliar to me; I still feel as if Romford ought to be the word inside the brackets. I recollect that almost the first time I played at Romford was in an open amateur competition, for which there was a very good and representative entry of London amateurs. I think it shows how much the general standard of amateur golf has gone up, that the winning score was 164 (84 + 80) by Mr. Mure Fergusson. Certainly Mr. Fergusson was not in his best form, but this score was good enough to win, and to win quite comfortably. There was, as far as I can remember, nothing amiss with the weather, and even making every allowance for gutty balls, it does seem extraordinary that so many people should play so supremely ill. It would be far less likely to happen to-day.
The sixth green
Nevertheless Romford is not a course that one would choose for the doing of a low score, for it is neither short nor easy, and is a great deal better golf than it looks. Its appearance is not particularly attractive, because in the first place it is flat, and in the second there are hedges and trees to be seen. Braid himself speaks of it in Nisbet’s Golf Year Book as a “very good park course.” The adjective may well be allowed to pass, but to call it a ‘park’ course conveys a wrong impression, to my mind at least; it is too open for the description to be quite appropriate, though I admit I can think of no better word.
If a course has really good putting greens and demands that the ball should be hit consistently far and straight, then there is a good deal to be said for it, and these virtues must be conceded to Romford. You must hit straight or you will be in a bunker, or ‘tucked up’ behind a tree; you must hit far or you will not get up to the green in the right number of strokes. The fourth and fifth are two as long holes as come consecutively on any course, except Blackheath, and the fifth is an especially good one. Better than either I like the seventh with its narrow tee-shot between the trees and that out of bounds territory that comes creeping in to catch you on the right. It is a hole that, in colloquial language, ‘wants a lot of playing.’
There are really quite a lot more fine holes—the tenth, for instance, with a tremendous carrying second over a pond, and the fourteenth, where the player is fairly hemmed in with trees and hedges, and must drive as straight as an arrow. When Braid was there he accomplished some ridiculous scores in the sixties, but ordinary people will find that anything in the seventies is quite good enough for them, and that many a hole that ought to be done in four will, in fact, be done in five or more. Especially is this the case when the going is at all heavy, for Romford can on occasions be just a little soft and muddy. It is probably, like a great many other inland courses, at its best in spring or autumn, for then the putting greens are really a pleasure to putt upon.