The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are rich in many things, but are very decidedly poor in the matter of golf courses. I should be more precise if I said poor in their own courses, for in Frilford Heath and Worlington (or as it is often called, Mildenhall) they are lucky to possess hospitable neighbours, who provide them with very delightful golf indeed.
The courses of Cambridge I know very well indeed, having played over them at intervals during the greater part of my life. With those of Oxford I have only, comparatively speaking, a bowing acquaintance, founded on the annual match between the University and the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society. Before turning to Frilford there is a word to be said of Cowley, Radley, and Hinksey, the latter of which has now ceased to exist. Cowley, so I have heard my friend Mr. Croome declare, is now rather a good course, and as I have never seen it, I most certainly will not venture to contradict him; but I can take my oath as to both Hinksey and Radley that they call for some other epithet. Hinksey was certainly amusing, and I have spent some not wholly unpleasant afternoons there squelching through the mud and trying vainly to hole putts by cannoning off alternate wormcasts. There was a short hole—the fourth, I think—where one played a pitching shot into the heart of a wood which was distinctly entertaining, but on the whole it was not a good test of golf, or, if it was, then I would rather have my golf tested in some other way.
When Hinksey ceased to exist Radley came into being, and it is most decidedly a longer and more difficult course, but I am not certain that it is such good fun. It is a good deal longer; indeed a great many of the holes are of a very good length. There is a really good seventeenth, where one skirts a wood on the right, and granted a good lie—a thing which rests upon the knees of the gods—one may hit two really fine shots and get a fine four. I imagine, however, that no one will be prepared to deny that it is muddy—I will go so far as to say extremely muddy—and in these days we are so pampered with beautiful sandy inland courses that we no longer suffer mud at all gladly. So if we are at Oxford I think we had better throw economy to the winds and charter a ‘taxi,’ which shall take us up Cumnor Hill to Frilford Heath.
Approaching the ninth green
Frilford is only seven miles from Oxford, but it might be a hundred miles from anywhere. It lies on a little unfrequented by-road, and is as utterly rural and peaceful a spot as could be found anywhere. Here is sand enough and to spare—a wonderful oasis in the desert of mud. The sand is so near the turf that out of pure exuberance it breaks out here and there in little eruptions on the surface or flies up in a miniature sand-storm as the ball alights. The ground is for the most part very flat, and there are fir trees and whins scattered here and there. There is also a pretty wood of firs and birches, over which we have to drive at the third hole, of which more anon. The greens are a little rough as yet, and some of the bunkers have still to be made, or at least had not been made when I last played there; but time alone is wanted to make Frilford a very fine course indeed. It is already a wonderfully charming one.
The first two holes remind one a little of Muirfield, since there is a stone wall over which a pulled ball will inevitably vanish. The second is a fine long two-shot hole, and at the first, which is somewhat shorter, a highly ingenious use has been made of a solitary tree, which forces the player to drive close to the stone wall if he is to have an open approach. Then comes the third before mentioned, which is a one-shot hole. The wood rises pretty steeply in front of the tee, and the shot is made the more difficult because a cleek is hardly long enough, and so we have to take a wooden club. Many a shot that would under ordinary circumstances fill us with a mild degree of conceit will only send the ball crashing into the forest. It is no hole for the ‘low raker’ which we regard with complacency at Hoylake and St. Andrews. We must hit a fine high towering shot, and then we may hope to find our ball on the green—a pretty little green which nestles close under the lee of the wood on the far side. After this come some long open holes in a country of scattered whin bushes. Exactly how long they are I am not prepared to say. I played them in the company of Mr. A.J. Evans, and he appeared to regard them justifiably enough as two-shot holes, but personally I found myself taking by no means the most lofted of my iron clubs for my third shot. There is a pretty little pitching hole over a stone wall—the seventh—which has a flavour of Harlech about it; and the ninth, which brings us close to the club-house again, is surely one of the most alarming holes in existence. The drive is simple enough, but my goodness, what a second! In front of the green is a mountain, and on either side of the green are deep pits, towards which the ground ‘draws’ most unmistakably. Then the green itself is quite small, and has in its centre a copy of the aforesaid mountain in miniature. The approach shot, moreover, is by no means a short one, but is for the ordinary driver a good firm iron shot, so that a four is really an epoch-making score for the hole.