Birkdale designer and some home truths

His grandson might be taking some flak for Royal Birkdale's revamp but there may be no more fitting a man to put his name to an Open Championship venue than Frederick Hawtree.

It seems that Fred, who knocked the Lancashire course into its current shape 77 years ago, was firmly of the view that golf should be open to all, once declaring that "manners matter and money does not". He was the co-founder of the National Association of Public Golf Courses and the Artisan Golfers' Association and had a bigger hand in my own golfing life than I realised.

I lived in Birmingham for 18 years and while I played golf much more then than I do now, I cared considerably less about golf architecture, so it never occurred to me to ask why the calibre of public courses in and around England's second city is so renowned.

According to this article, however, Fred Hawtree was responsible for all but one of them.

Further south, it is still possible to play his very first project, at the delightfully-appointed Croham Hurst club in Croydon, Surrey (reviews here; aerial here) which opened in 1912 and was a joint design venture with James Braid (although Golf Digest suggests that Braid was largely a figurehead).

Elsewhere in the Hawtree portfolio, it would be remiss of me to omit mention of his work at Sweden's Bastad Golf Club. Many of us have referred to the odd 'bastard golf course' in our time, of course, but this is the real deal...

Enjoy the Open. God is once more in his heaven.