Haste Hill Course Review

Make ye Haste to the Hill..

Martin Park
Thu, 10 Feb 2000
Haste Hill Course Review
HASTE HILL GOLF CLUB. The Drive Northwood Middlesex

Tel: 01923 825224

Green Fees: £12.50 Weekdays and £17.50 Weekends and Bank Holidays. How to get there: Three miles from Northwood Hills tube station.

Mention the word ‘Northwood’ and lady golfers across the nation cringe before wielding sharp objects in defiance of the last bastion of male chauvinistic golf, the much-maligned Northwood Golf Club.

Smack bang next door to Channel Four’s favourite ‘Cutting Edge’ golf course is Haste Hill, a mature and challenging public course bordering suburbia and unspoilt countryside with a layout as good as its neighbour where everyone is welcome. And I mean everyone, providing you can find a space in the car park.

Unlike next door, you get a few beginners attempting to negotiate this tight and hilly parkland course, with catastrophic results. Military golf (left-right-left-right) is a common sight and the fact that the shrubbery has survived the onslaught of ‘potential’ golfers is some surprise.

Haste Hill demands your full attention on every hole and if your mind plays truant, this course will eat you up and spit you out before you can say “Put me down for an eight there!” Just ask Fore’s mate!

There is a rich variety of par fours and with only one par five, the bigger hitters have to work hard for birdies. And the par threes are a delight, especially the first, it has enough sand around it to accommodate a herd of camels.

For a pay and play course, the condition is better than many private venues with the fairways and tees in fine fettle and the greens play as if they have been top-dressed with chewing gum. If you can get your ball to stop dancing a jig as you fire it into the greens, you find that they putt smoothly, if a little slow. Only the rough lets it down with some triffid-like weeds in places helping to rack up the numbers on your card.

And for those of you who believe that trees are 90% air, this course will persuade you otherwise. Bring your straight game to leafy Northwood and you won’t be disappointed.