St Enodoc Golf Club Church Course Review

Nov 27, 2018

The dry sandy ground here makes for superb turf and this combines with the undulating terrain to provide playing surfaces of an excellent standard

St Enodoc Golf Club Church Course Review

Green Fee Range: £50-£90

Medal Tee: Par 69 – 6,299 Yards

Visitor Times: Every day (after 14:30 on Saturday) – times vary according to the day of the week, but in general visitor times are in 30 minutes swathes throughout the day such as 8:30-9:00, 10:00-10:30, 13.00-13:30 and 15:00-15:30.

Website: www.st-enodoc.co.uk

St Enodoc Golf Club Church Course Review

The rugged, rolling beauty of the Cornish coastline provides a stunning backdrop to this wonderfully varied James Braid design. Packed with memorable features such as the Himalayas bunker, it’s a thrilling ride all the way.

A view of the church at St Enodoc (Getty Images)

Cornwall has a reputation for some of the UK’s finest coastal scenery, so it’s no surprise that the county also fares well when it comes to first-class seaside golf, with James Braid’s Church course at St Enodoc on the Camel estuary the most dramatic of its links courses.

There is wonderful variety among its holes, which wind their way up to and around the 11th- century St Enodoc church, where Sir John Betjeman lies buried. This is a place he loved and he even dedicated a verse to it in his work Seaside Golf.

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The course’s toughest test –the fearsomely demanding 10th – lies closest to the poet’s grave. Even a very good drive may leave a long approach that needs to get airborne quickly to clear the dune angling in from the right.

The course works its way through a wealth of pure links drama from the 1st to the 9th, a slightly quieter spell mid round, the aforementioned 10th notwithstanding, then as stirring a links finale as you could wish for from the steeply downhill par-3 15th.

The par-5 16th along the Camel estuary is simply magnificent, negotiating a series of humps and swales en route to the green, while the long par-3 17th and par-4 18th ensure no golfer can rest easy until safely back in the clubhouse.

No write-up would be complete without mention of the Himalaya bunker on the 6th, a modest par 4 rendered infinitely more difficult by this vast hazard, over which the majority of approach shots to an amphitheatre green must be played. Pick a line and execute with confidence to avoid a very testing third shot.

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