Executive Golf Magazine

One of golf’s best-kept secrets is no longer a secret. There is a golf club in north Wales that is such a gem its name used to be passed around among aficionados, whispered by one to another from behind the back of the hand. “You’ve played Sand Hills in Nebraska, Bandon Dunes in Oregon and Sebonack on Long Island, have you? But have you played Nefyn in north Wales?”

Now though, the word about the cliff-top course on the north of the Lleyn peninsula is out. People whose aim is to spread word of the glories of golf in the principality are shouting about Nefyn. VisitWales is doing its best to make Nefyn as well known as Ballybunion, that Irish gem, or Macrihanish in Scotland. And any slack left by VisitWales s being taken up by Ryder Cup Wales, the body set up to promote that event at Celtic Manor in three years’ time.

Is a photograph worth a thousand words? I can think of one that is, namely one that features regularly in the advertising for golf in Wales, a photograph of a curving bay dotted with sailing boats to the left, a rocky promontory snaking its way towards you on which the manicured outlines of two fairways are clearly visible and, centred, the dark shape of a mountain. This, then, is Nefyn.

There are a few people who would promote the place for nothing. No salary, no expenses, just for love. I am the first of them. Bernard Darwin, the famous golf correspondent of The Times, always said that Aberdovey was the course that his soul loved most. His Aberdovey is my Nefyn. I played golf there when I was eight and I hope I am still playing golf there when I am 80.

Let me try and explain why I feel the way I do about it. At 6,200 yards, the Old Course is not the longest or the most difficult course in Wales. Ashburnham, Southerndown, Royal Porthcawl, Royal St David’s are all longer and more difficult. So are Conwy and Holyhead, Cradoc and Llanymynech, Celtic Manor and Aberdovey. But for sheer fun nothing beats playing the Old Course at Nefyn on a soft day in May when birds sing overhead, the grass is springy underfoot and from various points on the peninsula nine holes you can go to the edge of the cliff and look across at a bay as good as any on the Amalfi coast in Italy.

Nefyn’s 27 holes are enough to make two courses, the Old and the New. Let us deal with the Old Course first because that is the more hymned, the one that contains the holes on the aforementioned rocky promontory. The best way of describing the layout is to say that when you come off the first green, the next nine holes are to the left, broadly speaking, and the last eight holes are to the right, broadly speaking.

“Bernard Darwin, the famous golf correspondent of The Times, always said that Aberdovey was the course that his soul loved most. His Aberdovey is my Nefyn”

Good as the first 10 holes are, no one who has played the last eight holes is ever likely to forget them. From the 11th to the 18th the holes combine a degree of difficulty measured at seven out of 10 and views I rate at 9.9 out of 10. Just as the whole course is not long, so these eight holes only total 2,729 yards, an average of 341 yards. There are four par 4s, two par 5s if you play the 12th from the back tee as you should, and two par 3s. The 11th and 12th have the sea to the right, as does most of the 17th. On the 13th and 15th it is to the left. Only on the 16th, a short hole, and the 18th, are the cliff edge and the sea not in play.

Did I mention the 12th? It requires a blind tee shot and a blind second shot. There is a public road to the left, a crater or pothole up near the green and a path leading down to a public house to be negotiated too.

The club was founded in 1907 and 13 years later the course was lengthened. It was extended again 30 or so years ago when members felt that the difficulties posed by the narrowness of the peninsula nine and the public right of way on it meant it could not be played as often as was needed. So another nine holes have been created on the land adjoining the front nine holes. Call me a heretic but they are not Nefyn’s finest. ‘The’ Nefyn golf course is the one that uses the peninsula nine.

The members are rightly proud of their course for its views and its sportiness. The clubhouse is friendly and is just about on the highest piece of land so that the holes fall away from it. But when I think of the course where I spent so many hours as a child I think of the quality of its tees. On the new fifth, for example, spume lands on you on a windy day, thrown up by the sea crashing on the rocks behind and below you. On the second tee, 370 yards from the green and played around a bay, you can look at the target, feel the freshening wind in your face and wonder how on earth you are going to be able to reach the green in two strokes. The 15th tee is raised, as is the 17th, and you are required to hit your ball across the edge of another inlet as you are on the 17th.

The drive on the 13th is very testing when a cross wind blows from the right. The short 14th is played from a tee that resembles the starting gate of a downhill ski race or a raised pulpit. You half expect some bearded Biblical character to deliver a 45-minute sermon from there, his cassock blowing in the wind. The target is a green that is perhaps 30 feet below the tee and canted slightly downwards from the right. Hit too far and your ball might ricochet off a rock and rattle around on the roof of the lifeboat station. Be wayward and it might end on a beach.

David Lloyd George, whose home was not far away, played occasionally at Nefyn. So did Clement Atlee. So should you. Nefyn may no longer be hidden but it remains a gem.

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