Is This A Marmite Course? Cruden Bay Golf Club Review

Nish: 0:00

Every story has an ending. Does our quest to play the top 100 courses in 10 years have a good ending? I’m Nish, I’m Chris, and we’re here to guide you through this golfing journey. This is the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast, episode 42. Is this a Marmite course? The Cruden Bay Golf Club Review. Opinions are like noses. Everyone has one one and this course a definitely divided opinion between us, but also between the people we spoke to. Now, everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion and I’ll get to the course shortly and we’re probably set for our most heated discussion yet. However, we’ll start by giving you the setup, the context or the flavor about the club in general and what happened on the day before we get to the course. So the day started off nice and easy and relaxed in Aberdeen, didn’t it? We got a nice fry up from.

Chris: 0:54

Graham, wasn’t it from our? Wonderful hosts yeah, it was up.

Nish: 0:58

It was amazing. They even catered for my gluten free you know awesome, awesome hosting guys.

Chris: 1:03

Thank you very much 100.

Nish: 1:06

And then we, we took a lovely scenic drive out to cruden bay, rocked up, opened the boot and then chris realized he’d forgotten his shoes at trump international yeah, I mean, luckily it’s only sort of 25 minutes down the coast.

Chris: 1:23

Um, if I left them anywhere else, I left them anywhere else. I left them at Gulland. It would have been a long trip back.

Nish: 1:28

I think you’d have been in for a £150 pair of shoes.

Chris: 1:31

Yeah, an expensive pair.

Nish: 1:34

They’re not cheap. Are they in pro shops?

Chris: 1:36

No, they’re not.

Nish: 1:41

So I will give you all the intro stuff that happened when I checked us in, because unfortunately you weren’t there, chris, and I think you probably would have quite liked it actually.

Chris: 1:48

So yeah, it’s not really because we’d arrived in good time, haven’t we? For a couple of hours before our tea time, we were nice and relaxed, like so. We had a nice breakfast ready to go open the boot. Wait a minute, where’s my shoes? I don’t know. I have to root around for my key that I’d stolen from Pinto National and then make my way back to pick my shoes up, but anyway, yeah, you have to do all the intros.

Nish: 2:11

Let’s forget about all that for a second. So it started off. I kind of went down to go and check us in initially. So you kind of go down to that Now actually the car park is at the top level. You then sort of go down the side to where the pro shop is and as soon as I turned around the corner like I could just see the course all laid out in front of me and it looked unbelievable. So the way it’s all set up is you’ve got this probably about seven holes, I think you can see, of the actual. No, probably not even seven. I’m probably talking about six holes of the actual course. You can see the full course and then within that they have an 18 hole par three course which is called the saint olaf course. Now that day it was really busy because they had a junior comp on, so they’re expecting 66 juniors playing, so it’s going to be really busy in that little central bit. So I’ve kind of like seen all of this course and I thought I didn’t know that the, the par three was within the other course. I thought this is it. This is like that’s the course right there and I thought that was amazing. Like you can see the whole thing.

Nish: 3:15

So went in, checked in at the, the clubhouse, and the the pro checked me in and, uh, you get given a bottle of loch lomond single malt whiskey each when you check in. Yeah, it’s a nice little touch, lovely little touch and they have a little tag inside. I was supposed to have it with me but I haven’t got it. A little visual aid would be nice, but, um, it’s called birdie juice, or they call it birdie juice. I was like, all right, okay, that’s, that’s quite nice. Um, I was driving so I wasn’t going to partake in that. So we did all that and then I kind of went around, did my normal taking pictures, and there’s loads of really old stuff up in the clubhouse in Cruden Bay, yeah, I think it’s worth mentioning the view from that clubhouse.

Chris: 4:02

It’s probably one of the best we’ve seen, isn’t it? It’s pretty stunning. It’s a great big panoramic window that you can like you say you can see over a good chunk of the course. It’s pretty, pretty spectacular because you’re going to raise up above it, isn’t it?

Nish: 4:13

yeah, like it’s sort of. It’s a bit um, we’ll have it on our review blog. It’s a bit bond villain lair-esque with the way it’s perched on this, this hill but yeah, you can see this whole expanse of of golf holes and it’s amazing. Like that it was a lovely place to sit and, and you know, sort of have a fresh on wait for me to come back just waiting for notification of when chris is set off, uh.

Nish: 4:39

But I sort of decided to start chatting to some of the some of the staff, because I really had nowhere to talk to Chris. But I was like talking to and do you know what? They were super, super friendly. They kept sort of coming over and checking up on me and just making sure you know I’d got what I needed and all that kind of stuff, and I sort of asked them, as I sort of do. I was like you know you expecting to be busy today. And that’s when I found out about the junior comp and the staff also then said that what they expect on sundays as well is pretty much the whole village just comes in for their sunday lunch into the club. So it kind of immediately gave you a lovely, warm, fuzzy like community feeling to that club yeah, it definitely.

Chris: 5:20

It definitely had that, didn’t, I think? Because we we played trump the day before and that was a very different vibe, wasn’t it? It was kind of lots of American tourists around and, you know, it was very much a felt like a commercial enterprise, didn’t it? But then Cruden Bay was the complete antithesis of that, wasn’t it? Going in there, it was very much a golf club, lots of local people, like you say, going down to play golf or have the Sunday lunch and um, and lots of kind of local people working there who were incredibly friendly.

Nish: 5:46

Right it was, they were so friendly like almost like like you can’t be too friendly, there’s no such thing but like they, you know they were just so that it was like they loved being there. Yeah, that was that’s all I can describe it as we. We then sort of taking a few pictures and things like that. And that’s when chris arrived and, uh, I was in the midst of talking to one of the ladies who was looking after me and giving me some information, so I was taking a few pictures and she was kind of cleaning one of the tables and she suddenly just went oh, if you’d like to know any history of the club, then I’m very happy to help you out and give you some information. I was like, well, yeah, I’m not going to say no to that. Let’s, you know, tell me what’s going on.

Nish: 6:26

So she started describing one of the people that was on the shelves who donated a few like trophies and little trinkets and things like that, but they’d won. Uh, and it turned out to be her. I was like, all right, okay, so her name was Christine Middleton have to name check her because she was so lovely and she told me her sort of golfing history and she won something called the St Rule Trophy at St Andrews, or the Rule Trophy there’s something like that. Now, that is the. I think they have something called the Lynx Trophy. Is that right At St Andrews? And it’s the women’s equivalent of that. But she beat Annika Sorensen to win that, which is it’s not a bad scalp, is it Pretty good?

Chris: 7:12

isn’t it.

Nish: 7:14

So basically she was a little local celebrity.

Chris: 7:17

So if you’re in there In the midst of Scottish golfing royalty.

Nish: 7:20

I was just like, can I have a picture? And she was like, oh uh, oh yeah, I suppose. So, you know, like a bit shell-shocked really, but it was. It was just so nice that and I think that was that just sort of for me, was the the prime example of how homely and how much of a community club this really does feel like, and like, say, total opposite to the day before then.

Nish: 7:42

We sort of, you know, went off and, um, by this time, you know, we’d kind of met up and it was like right, let’s go and have a little warm-up, all that kind of thing. And then chris, chris kind of went to the range. I had a few puts on these crazy undulating practice greens and then we went up to the first tee so the chris can come in now, because we’re sort of we’re together now playing it, playing around. We went up to brought back in from exile separated and then brought back together like two magnets. Yeah, we. So we at the first tee, and I think we should mention this again.

Nish: 8:17

So christina told us about this and I didn’t know, and our research hadn’t really pulled this out either. They’ve got a starter’s hut, and I’m using inverted commas for that it’s pretty big. It’s what used to be the pro shop for when the club was first made. Now in there there was a lovely gentleman called Joe who was our starter for the day. So Christina told us I’ll make sure that somebody’s in there to show you around. If not, then let me know and somebody will come and show you around. Now in that starter hub there is a treasure trove of golf artifacts, memorabilia, pictures.

Chris: 8:58

It was pretty remarkable, wasn’t it really? There’s all sorts of little bits and bobs, wasn’t there hanging around?

Nish: 9:04

Mate. I was just like I could walk around there for half an hour. So top tip for crude and bay if you’re going, if you get a chance, go to your tea 10 minutes earlier than you normally would and just go inside and have a little look. You go and pick up your scorecard and your teas and things like that from there anyway, but go in there and have a little look. They had like I mean, joe was really really gracious, he was kind of happy to to pass. I’ve never touched them before, but like old school golf balls, you know the really old, tiny, heavy ones yeah, you kind of look at them and you go, they had no like.

Nish: 9:41

Well, they had compression obviously in them, but they had nothing to protect the golfer’s hands from hitting basically a stone.

Chris: 9:49

It’s a small rock.

Nish: 9:50

Yeah, now he did tell me one thing that was really interesting have you heard of I can’t remember what their name is exactly, but I think they call the Hickory Golf Club or something like that and it’s basically a load of golf enthusiasts who all dress in like plus fours all that kind of thing and they play in hickory with hickory clubs, right?

Nish: 10:09

so joe was telling me and I didn’t know this and it actually totally makes sense he handed me a golf ball that is an old golf ball but it’s modern made and I was like, okay, looking at it and all it looked really nice and shiny and all new, not worn down or anything like that. And he said, said they get them manufactured now from a company in America, because if they use new modern golf balls with the old hickory clubs it shatters the hickory shaft.

Chris: 10:36

Okay, did not know that. There is still somebody out there making old school golf balls.

Nish: 10:41

There is one company in the States out there Elastic bands in the middle and all that kind of thing, Absolutely doing all of that. So, yeah, I mean, he was just what a gentleman Joe was, and again he deserves a bit of a special mention.

Chris: 10:53

Yeah, he was a lovely guy, wasn’t he?

Nish: 10:55

Now I think we’ve left it long enough and we’ve teased everybody long enough with our is it a Marmite course? So I think actually we will bring out one more thing, I think before we get into it. Chris, I’m not going to put my tin hat on, but we have to mention that a lot of people kept talking about this castle. That is in the distance and you do see it a lot on the course. You see it from the clubhouse and then when you go over the hill you do see it a lot on the course. You see it for from the clubhouse and then when you go over the hill you can see it the whole way. It’s called slain’s castle and it’s basically it’s ruins of a castle. Now we kept getting told it was the inspiration for dracula.

Chris: 11:34

Now tell me what you told me when we were walking down the first fairway after that came up for the third time well, my understanding of it is that it’s, uh, that is based on the castle in scarborough right, it’s the, it’s the famous place that it was. It was kind of written and based on and and where did you get that information from, chris?

Nish: 11:52

I think it might have been the actual book. That was a bit that got me. It’s written in the book. Where is the inspiration?

Chris: 12:04

I think I’ve heard a few people claim to be the castle that Dracul was based on, but who knows, it’s one of those things that’s lost in history, I suppose.

Nish: 12:15

I’ve got a real flavour for playing golf in Scotland and I think there’s got to be these little sprinklings of tall tales, yeah, and like myths and things like that. I think it just kind of adds to the romance of playing golf there. Yeah, so we’re on to it. Now, chris, we’re on to golf. So I think I’ve spoken. I’ve monopolized the welcome, haven’t I? I feel like I should let you. What’s it? What do they do in a debate? They give you like three minutes, don’t they?

Chris: 12:39

and, like you said, you set your case, uh yeah, it’s not quite that dramatic, obviously, but it’s not quite that dramatic but yeah, let’s, I’ll set my stall out a little bit.

Chris: 12:48

Yeah, you tell us what you thought, because because, yeah, I think you mentioned earlier I think we’ve usually come off with a reasonable amount of agreement on these courses so far, and this is the first one that we walked off and had very different opinions, I think, on on our views of the course.

Chris: 13:06

Um, so I struggled with it and I don’t know whether it was just I wasn’t in the right frame of mind or what, but I really struggled to get on with Cruden Bay at all, on on any level really, I think there was there was a couple of holes that drew me in for like one hole or two hole stretch and then I flicked back out and I got to holes that again I just didn’t, didn’t really like they were a bit, they were quirky in a way. But I just and I don’t know whether part of it is that we played trump the day before and that was so beautifully manicured, so incredibly well thought out. This is obviously very much a an older style golf course, designed a long, long time ago and hasn’t been kind of amended since then. But I really really struggled with it and I think part of the reason I struggled with it is because it’s it’s so highly ranked and kind of go.

Nish: 13:56

It was about 22 I think, on the list at least, yeah, 24, I think, plus 23, so it’s one, yeah, I think it’s 22 now I think on the list. I think it’s 24, I think Trump was 23,. So it’s one.

Chris: 14:02

Yeah, I think it’s 22 now, I think, on the official list. So I was going in there with really high expectations I think you know that it was going to and Trump, like I say, it’s pretty much level pegging with Trump and the day before I had fallen in love with Trump I thought it was just incredible. We We’ll speak about that a bit more in the review. But then I got to Cruden Bay and I just felt really disappointed by it.

Chris: 14:24

I did and I felt like there’s some really good holes in there. So there’s probably I don’t know three or four holes in there that I really enjoyed. The rest of them, I thought, were fairly average and could have been on any course, any links course, not in the top 100. So I really struggled to get on board with it. And yeah, like I said, maybe it was because it was the third day we’ve been playing in a row and I lost my shoes before, and so maybe I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for kind of glossing over some of those things that maybe you would normally gloss over.

Chris: 14:54

Um, I also thought the condition of the course and again, maybe this is because we played trump the day, but the condition of the course for me wasn’t comparable to the other courses we played so far. Maybe that’s just a weather thing or whatever, but it just didn’t seem comparable. The greens, the fairways, it just wasn’t in the same kind of the same bracket, I don’t think, as some of the other courses that we’ve played so far.

Nish: 15:18

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s as interesting. I sort of flippantly said everyone’s entitled to their wrong opinion, but actually this whole sport, this whole game, is a game of opinions and actually what we’re doing is is opinions. It’s somebody somewhere, or a gathering of people, have said there’s a top 100 and we we’ve already spoken in the hind head review where we’ve sort of said how is this course ranked 91st?

Chris: 15:44

yeah, but you know, a lot of people have gone and that’s what they’ve ranked it yeah, this one, you know I would, yeah, I would, I would agree with this one again. I I’m very surprised that it’s ranked that highly yeah, for me personally and I can see like it’s.

Chris: 15:57

It’s incredibly beautiful in parts. Right when you get up to the top of that ninth and you walk along the crest of that hill, you’ve got the yeah, you get on the T and you’ve got the ocean and the beaches in front of you. It’s absolutely stunning in parts. I just struggled with the actual the course and the whole itself. I think it didn’t quite match up to that that. You know beautiful scenery that you had there and and, yeah, it just didn’t didn’t do it for me.

Nish: 16:22

I think it was probably a victim of the actual rank that it was at.

Chris: 16:26

Yeah, I think if that had been ranked 65 70 and probably going in there, going that’s an undiscovered gem, like it’s so much better than that, yeah, and but I think going in there with really high expectations, I think I was just a little bit underwhelmed by it.

Nish: 16:40

You know, early twenties is punchy, isn’t it yeah?

Chris: 16:42

I mean some of the, some of the really big, big names in golf right.

Nish: 16:46

Yeah, yeah, I mean I suppose we’ll try and give it a bit of balance here. And actually I remember very vividly now in the preview that it came up and you said look, it’s quite a divisive course this, because there are some people who absolutely love it and some people absolutely hate it. And I think that I mean, how freaky is it that that’s exactly how it’s gone with, just two people.

Nish: 17:12

We could have both loved it exactly yeah and and I think actually that we almost couldn’t have planned this any better you know that that is probably crude and Bay in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Chris: 17:23

Yeah, it’s a funny one because I think, going in there, of the three that we were playing, I’d say Cruden was probably the one that I was more excited about. I was kind of not wanting to like Trump, for obvious reasons. Gullen I just didn’t really know much about and I hadn’t really kind of any, you know, expectations of what it was going to be like, but Cruden was the one that I looked at and gone. That’s right on my street, it’s nice and quirky, it’s going to be some fun holes and I yeah, I just don’t know whether it was just an expectation versus reality. It didn’t give you what you wanted.

Chris: 17:50

It didn’t, and I think part of it was the first two holes were very bland and could have been anywhere. Yeah, um, and maybe that was just maybe. I just struggled to get out of that. You know I’d already had to go back for my shoes first two holes. I didn’t enjoy. We were driving home late that night so we had to kind of press on it and get through the round fairly quickly. So I don’t know, there’s, there’s lots of factors in there that maybe maybe impacted my my opinion, but but I think it still stands that there’s a lot of holes on that course that could have been anywhere that weren’t top 100 quality. However, the holes that were brilliant were magnificent. Right, they were absolutely gorgeous, breathtaking holes and for completely unique holes that we wouldn’t play anywhere else yeah, I’d go along with that.

Nish: 18:43

I’ve sort of I wrote a few little sort of watch words about the call. I just wrote like, wrote, there’s like bullet points, almost. So then I started going into a little bit more sort of detail. I mean, it was a gentle start. You know, you’re you’re the first two holes. You basically go up alongside houses like the road, and we haven’t really seen that too much. There’s a lot of elevation change actually there, but kind of it’s, they’re just straight, they’re just straight holes, which is my nemesis. But anyway, we won’t get to that. But I think I’d very much agree with that because I think it’s, you know, very gentle start, sort of eases you in a little bit. And but I thought when we hit that third hole, which is it’s a drivable par four but it’s sort of a blind t-shot, and then when you go over the crest of the hill, I’d sort of just like just nod mine, and it just kind of kept rolling and ended up being a perfect place to put it.

Nish: 19:42

But you sort of get over the hill and then suddenly the village emerges and then there’s like this low down, almost bold green that for me, like on a personal level, set me off on the round as exactly what I was expecting from the course. Yeah, because I was like okay, there’s surprises every round, every corner. Now I will add, some of the surprises are good, some of them are bad, but little things. Like I’ve never, ever encountered a blind par three. I’ve never encountered that anywhere in golf, where you just cannot see the green. There’s a stick somewhere and you just got to go for that. Now that’s the bit. That’s the kind of the weird contrast, I suppose, of this course. Right, because you either love that or you hate that and you’re not going to go in between. I don’t think you know you could hate it and you play a good t-shirt and I still don’t think you’re going to come off and go that. Oh, that was great.

Chris: 20:41

Now I actually like I quite enjoyed that. I quite enjoyed the blind par three. But I wonder why, chris?

Nish: 20:46

I wonder why?

Chris: 20:47

because I really was shot in that um, but yeah, there was another par three, which was the eighth of a night um, which I just thought was a very much a nothing hole. It just yeah, just it just felt like a.

Chris: 21:04

Yeah, it was just a flat, flat par three in a vast expanse of land and I think, like I said, I think it kind of was a couple of holes where it would get me excited and then all of a sudden it would just be back to something that I, that I was yeah, it wasn’t that I wasn’t that bothered by. So I think it just failed to just kind of get its hooks into me properly, like I think it almost if it had played another ten holes of it I might have kind of got into the swing of it, but it just the flow of it just didn’t kind of work for me. I don’t think.

Nish: 21:33

Yeah, I think a couple of other little things that I’ve kind of written. I thought it was quite rugged, and I don’t mean this as a criticism, this phrase, but it’s like rough around the edges, that course, and by that I mean it’s not overly manicured, it’s almost at one with its surroundings. You know, you’re not going there and see these beautiful walkways or anything like that You’re seeing, probably as that land has been for 200 years, whatever you’re just seeing it as it is is quite traditional in that sort of sense. Um, you’ve also got the. You know little touches that are kind of from a bygone era. Now, you know we again the, the we use the word loads and the weekend, but the juxtaposition of previous day.

Nish: 22:18

You’re getting the course map. You get in pin positions. You know everything’s like slick as you like. Yeah, and this was and I love this, by the way was like a bit of wood. You know chunky bit of wood. It says t. You know par 14. Know par 14, pin, not par 14, hole 14 pin. There’s a green circle with a grid of holes on it and there’s a T peg stuck in where the pin position is for that day. Yeah, I mean, that is just. That’s a throwback, isn’t it? Yeah?

Chris: 22:50

yeah, you kind of live in it. I noticed that on like the 15th hole or something.

Nish: 22:53

Yeah, I didn’t really didn’t pick up on that, I just thought that’s the shape of the green, but actually they were all the same. It was a bit weird, but I mean, absolutely that was amazing for me and that was that kind of almost I think I’d got into a very because I’d read up a lot about this. This course is on the Old Town Morris Trail, so it’s designed by Old Town Morris, it’s designed St Andrews, and I’d kind of got into that frame of mind, I think, quite a lot. So you know, perhaps it’s an important thing for people going to play to get in that clubhouse and spend a bit of time there and just kind of absorb it a little bit. Because also, one thing I have very much taken on board from our trip in scotland, because you get to speak to people there, is that they all ask uh, have you played st andrews, are you gonna play st andrews?

Nish: 23:35

And then everybody says exactly the same thing. They’re like not the best course, yeah. So it’s the, it’s the, the fame of the course, it’s the renown of the course that that kind of gets its teeth into you. Yeah, cruden Bay obviously doesn’t have that kind of reputation, but it’s got the same course designer. Yeah, now that might sort of go to explain that difference in opinion? Yeah, maybe I mean, I don’t know, I’m trying to explain it, I suppose yeah, me personally.

Chris: 24:06

I like this golf course a lot.

Nish: 24:07

I scored well, which does help. I liked it a lot because everything was interesting for me. Um, even you know those first couple of holes holes, they weren’t flat Like. There was a lot of undulation. On the first fairway there’s a lot of hills coming in from left, right and centre Seaborg can kick quite a lot. The green was suddenly on the second was elevated. I found you know there’s a couple of drivable par fours that we had. So even on a seemingly straightforward hole, you know you’re like, actually we are all sort of, compared to the older days, we are all bigger hitters now that, oh, I’ve got a chance of a chance of a birdie here. So I found it quite nice and it was in amongst the Jews. It was a really miss moody, misty Scottish day as well, wasn’t?

Chris: 24:51

it? Yeah, it was. It was a funny day, Wasn’t it? Mizzle, I think, is the term, isn’t it? What’s it called? Mizzle, mizzle, yeah.

Nish: 24:57

Oh, is that right? I think, so yeah, okay, I mean, you know, for me that kind of moody mist hanging in, it was like just a hovering above the dunes. Yeah, yeah, it worked.

Chris: 25:10

For me it was like it felt like I think it just made me a moody, misty kind of character for the day. It can go either way, can’t it yeah?

Nish: 25:18

but so I, you know, I I really did like it. I sort of I can’t say I’ve fallen in love with the place. Yeah, in terms of overall, whatever, but I think I still had an absolutely unbelievable day, oh, I mean I’ve got all of that stuff, like I got challenged from the golf course but actually you’ve got a few chances to score quite well.

Chris: 25:38

I’ve got unbelievable views, like the views yeah, I mean, the views were second to none, I think in terms of, yeah, it’s absolutely stunning, yeah, it’s just incredible, isn’t it? Let’s look at this croon bay beach pure, pure white beach with not a single person on it.

Nish: 25:51

It’s, it’s pretty stunning I mean you said you plonk that in greece and everyone’s absolutely going crazy.

Chris: 25:56

Yeah, absolutely. That’s full of people, right yeah?

Nish: 25:59

absolutely so. I think we had all of that to it, and I think we’re probably not going to convince each other either way, really, and I don’t think we need to.

Chris: 26:09

No, I don’t think we need to, I think it’s fine to agree to disagree on this one.

Nish: 26:13

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah for you know, for the total balance on that course. Um, yeah, it it, it did it, it did it for me. I understand why people go and play. I think what you pay for the round is probably a bit punchy, I think, um, you know we’re getting up to 200 pounds for a round there that’s that’s getting up there. Yeah, yeah, I think. I mean, is there anything about the course that you feel we might not be representing?

Chris: 26:38

enough of yeah, I don’t think so. I think, like you say, it’s a. It’s a real kind of mismatch of just incredibly scenic, beautiful holes and then just some some more kind of standard holes, and they kind of fill it out yeah, I could.

Nish: 26:52

I could see your point of view. When we were talking about it on the way back, I could see that. Uh, look, I think it’s not done it for me. I could understand that. I think, um, I think I was. I’ve counted myself a bit fortunate because I had such a relaxed couple of hours where I was just taking in the atmosphere of the club quite a lot that. I think it probably just set me in a different frame of mind yeah, and I I think you’re right.

Chris: 27:18

I think if I went back another day with kind of different expectations and a different kind of start to the day, I might well have got a different weather, I might well have come away from that course having a completely different, and I think that is absolutely 100 possible yeah, um, what a wonderful course then, in that case yeah it could totally divide opinion, and I do.

Nish: 27:40

I’ll stand by that. I think it is a marmite course. I really do. I think you’re either going to go there and love it, are you going to go there and come back and go. Oh god, you know, I might have spent a bit of money there. Actually, I don’t think I’ve got what. I mean, we got a little bottle of whiskey out of. It’s a great, you know. But yeah, but yeah, I can. I can totally understand. Uh, your, your your points of view there. Chris, I’ll concede that it’s quite a friendly debate that actually you know there are two things, two points of order.

Nish: 28:08

We must get out of the way, when I supposed to get out of the way and we’ve sort of left a hole, but uh, we must discuss before we do finish, and that is number one, our signature whole challenge. So that us, before we do finish, and that is number one, our signature hole challenge. So that was the fourth. It was a par three and he teed off the village. The kind of the inlet into the village was was to our left hand side, wasn’t it?

Chris: 28:27

yeah, that was beautiful. A hot little hole, that again. That’s one of the ones that you go oh, it’s just about to change, and then, yeah, we totally balls the party shots, didn’t?

Nish: 28:34

we did yeah. Yeah, just for for technicality’s sake. I actually won that hole, so that was a signature hole.

Chris: 28:40

Challenge back what are we on now I?

Nish: 28:45

think I’ve worked it out now that you’re you’re far, four or five up after 15, yeah, so it’s, I’m cloning back. I was eight, eight down at one point, okay, yeah, just getting a bit hairy. And then the par three challenge, which was our little side bet. So I’ve got some graphics here I might as well use them which is a side bet. So it’s basically a par three challenge Gross, I don’t know, actually gross, I don’t know, it was net actually this one, and yeah, you you won that.

Chris: 29:22

You took it away in the last two holes. We were pretty level. I think, yeah, I think, I think net.

Nish: 29:24

I was quite ahead, but I just messed up my last one. Oh you did. Yeah, there’s the back-to-back par threes, wasn’t it? Yeah, didn’t, didn’t, didn’t come myself in glory in that one, but um, but that was our sort of side bets and signature hole challenge. But par three challenge is absolutely right up your street, but great, I mean I really enjoyed it, just the part which sharp. I mean it sharpens me to shit, to be honest. But yeah, it was great. And I suppose, again, you know, the par threes were actually quite nice on this course. I thought there was one that was probably a little bit like meh, and I know which one. You mean it was just basically using a flat bit of land.

Chris: 29:53

Yeah, it was.

Nish: 29:59

It must be the 11th actually. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, and I think that was probably a little victim of just being in this bit of flat land, but there was a nice area where there was an inlet coming in. It was meandering through the fairway, yeah, so I enjoyed it. Chris didn’t, but C’est la vie. But I think we both can agree that if somebody would have said to you that Hindhead was 24, cruden Bay was 91, you’d probably go, yeah.

Chris: 30:24

I think so yeah.

Nish: 30:25

I’d quite happily say that. So so that’s an interesting that that, I think, probably tells you where the where the course is at, even with all the romance and stuff around it, that we wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was in the bottom reaches of the top 100, instead of being right near the top, really amongst some pretty big hitters.

Chris: 30:43

So interesting review around the golf, isn’t it? It’ll be interesting when we go and play those other top courses around there, because we’ve only played a couple, haven’t we? Yeah, I said we’ve played three in the top 25, two of which we weren’t that enamored by one we were completely blown away by, which we’ll get into at a later date. So, yeah, it might just be that those top rated courses, you go in there with much higher expectations and then, yeah, it’s more difficult to meet those ultimately because you’re already going in there ready for something incredible.

Nish: 31:15

You’re right, chris, it’s a fascinating point, ready for something incredible. You’re right, Chris, it’s a fascinating point and I hope we end up with more discussion points like this, because it does become a bit boring if we just agree with everything.

Chris: 31:25

Yeah, we keep saying everything’s amazing.

Nish: 31:27

You know, life’s a bit boring with that, but yeah, thank you for Chris. I really appreciate your time. Next time on the Top 100 in 10 Golf Podcast, we’ll be reviewing our round at Hankley Common when we went down to sunny Surrey.