Queenswood Golf Club from the air-about as close as most people will get to this pampered playground for the self-entitled (Peter Barwick/geograph)
Few social pursuits twist and torment the blood quite like the noble game of golf.
If you’re not a fan then, much more often than not, you resent the very idea that thousands of acres of prime countryside should be set aside in order for privileged few to indulge in an expensive and inaccessible game.
And that’s your choice.
But it isn’t a sport for the ‘privileged few’ –not anymore anyway. Because England boasts the most golf courses of any country in Europe, a total of, according to the R&A just over 2,000; good walks (spoilt) that are shared amongst at least two million active players, many of whom will be members of a club.
Yet it is a game that can rile the devotee just as much as it delights them.
Broken clubs, golf bags hurled into lakes, running arguments and fall outs, they all happen on a golf course. It’s a game renowned for its belief in ‘proper’ etiquette at all times, but, for all that, in the bunker, no-one can hear you scream.
I should add at this point I do have a vested interest. I play the game myself and have, in the past, been a member of a club and will soon, once the weather gets better anyway (!) be the member of another.
A view of one of the two excellent Championship courses at Chichester Golf Club in West Sussex. Snooty and elitist it is most definitely not. (Robin Webster/geograph)
And I’m neither wealthy or privileged.
Indeed, it is a game that, despite its elitist image, is open to all to explore and play should they wish.
Sounds positively Utopian, doesn’t it?
Sadly, however, there are still bastions of inaccessibility within the game, clubs and facilities that are so jealously guarded by their members that, in some cases, you might find the penalties for trespassing onto any part of their hallowed acres even more severe than if you were caught inside Area 51 with a camera, notepad and several known acquaintances of Kim-Jong-un.
One such establishment is the Queenswood Golf Club near Ottershaw in Surrey.
A public footpath running up to the edge of the Queenswood Golf Club. Just hidden are the landmines and machine gun nests (Brendan & Ruth McCartney/geograph)
It is, in many ways, very untypical of a British golf club. It’s whole approach to both members and their guests, from the moment they pass through its secure gates, is one of slick professionalism and sheer panache.
Nothing is too much trouble.
It’s not unlike arriving at one of the best hotels in the world. Your baggage (or, in this case, golf clubs) are taken from you upon arrival (valet parking, of course) and sent to the first tee where they will await your arrival.
If you golf shoes need a polish then they’ll attend to that for you as well whilst you can forget hauling your own clubs across the green swathe as a caddy will always be provided.
It’s high end all the way.
A millionaires playground with no expense spared.
Does such a philosophy, dare I say it, go against the spirit of the game?
Ottershaw, home of the Queenswood Golf Club. A nice enough town. But it’s no St Andrews (Alan Hunt/geograph)
Well yes, absolutely, it definitely does. But when even the clubs website requires a login and password to access it (in comparison, GCHQ, for goodness sake, is on Twitter) you know you are entering a place where there is no such thing as normality, average or, gasp, off the shelf.
This is golf in the most grandiose of settings. And if you want it, you are going to have to pay for it.
The joining fee alone is rumoured to be six figures with an article about the club that featured in GQ magazine (now there’s a publication that would never be allowed to taint the clubhouse) back in 2017 claiming that it was around £200,000.
So goodness only knows what it is now.
That hasn’t prevented numerous celebrities (whose names I have but I’ll be beggared if I am going to give them a mention here) to join Queenswood, a club that issued a statement at the time the article was printed stating, “We don’t like to talk about our club, who our members are or how much it costs”.
Well, not to the hoi polloi anyway.
But you can bet your last bottle of Juglar Cuvee it’s all they talk about out on the course.
It’s golf Sebastian. But not as we know it.