L'Ancresse Links, Guernsey
L’Ancresse links Guernsey, home to both Royal Guernsey Golf Club and L’Ancresse Golf Club. Both clubs alike in dignity. Two clubs playing on one gorgeous links. Both their houses were plagued, by rabbits, a couple of years ago but you would scarcely know it now. The Montagues and Capulets get on famously on ground scarred by battles through the ages; from the Bronze Age through Napoleonic towers to Second World War bunkers. A round of golf here would have mellowed the warring parties on this romantic peninsula.
The land is also shared by walkers, hand in hand, heading for one or other of the two beaches, a couple of lanes criss cross and the wind hurtles between towers and concrete bunkers not that the defences deterred the invading rabbits.
Play the wind well and you can use these hard running links to manoeuvre the ball to the most advantageous position to attack the flags. Courses like these can look simple in photographs or on a map but every day is different, every tide brings a change, space is needed to make the game playable year round. A straightforward par 4 turns into a bruising par 5 from one day to the next. It was marvellous, after a wet spring in England, to run the ball along these coconut perfumed corridors and run the ball up the false fronts of the greens. Is there anything more pleasing in golf than running a ball through swales to pin high; executing the vision that is only relevant for the conditions at the time you played it? The greens were true so if you matched vision and execution the rewards were there. The rabbit problem has been rectified and the course was in great condition
The first is a lovely par 4 where bravery across the dog leg is rewarded with a short pitch and run to the green. The second with everything blowing your ball into the incoming tide was more of a challenge as the hole curves along the shore. However it was the daisies that disguised my ball and I never found it. Play short on the par 3 third, as near to the bunker as you dare in order to run it close to the pin.
There is evidence, particularly at this end of the course, of Bronze Age burial chambers and kitchen artefacts, an original halfway house of this world or the next. Staggeringly ancient. These people founded our world so we could play golf from Bronze to irons. I am in awe (if that is not too cheeky). Various holes are decorated with raised stones, some historic, some less so, but all add to the architecture of the course
The fourth is a long par 4, stroke index 1 and was certainly unattainable for me to reach in two that day. Eight was a lovely example of the course, a drive across the road, mainly used as a footpath, and between the banks of gorse. Good positioning is required to enable an aggressive shot to a well guarded and steeply banked green.
The tenth takes you towards the well tended houses and a green hollowed out between the fairway and the next tee. The key is to negotiate the mound in front as a correct read can run your ball to almost any corner of the green. I don’t recall a pin position that wasn’t challenging and the eleventh was another great example. A steep false front bank protected the pin from all but the bravest attacks that had also settled their account with the devious wind.
I spent too much time in the bunker on twelve, negotiated the tricky green position on thirteen and stretched out on the long par 5 uphill and into the wind. A lagged putt gave me a par and a smile at the top of the course and the best views of all.
Tremendous sights across the course, down the beaches and out to sea, wet suited and Glenmuir suited surfers of the wind, Martello towers, and sandy strollers straggle across the fifteenth as more structural ridges break up the fairway and afford glimpses of the raised green, a really lovely hole today but as with the shorter finishing holes it is probably a different story in a stiff Westerly.
The closing holes are not long on the card which could be anti climatic without a breeze. Indeed the only criticism you can level is that the course is not long at 6215 yards but in this wind swept terrain it is not about how long but how you play the contours. However, the 18th, a par 3 of 150 odd yards from an exorbitantly high tee in a cross wind will at least catch your breath. You can try to steer your ball on the way up and out but it does not belong to you on the way down.
It was a cracking afternoon on a traditional links that is well worth the detour. When I review my reviews it sometimes looks like I know what I am talking about. I can assure you that that is not the case. My card usually tells a sobering story. I was on handicap today [with adjustment for the second]. What infuriates me is being able to see, understand and appreciate the shots without the ability to execute them with any regularity.
The clubs are generously donating my green fee to Alzheimer’s Society, alongside their other fund raising activities, for which many thanks
