Aberdovey Golf Club Fact FileLocation: On the west coast of Wales, 90 miles south west of Liverp0olYear Established: 1892Par: 71Length (yards): 6486Green Fees (weekdays): £135Signature Hole: The brilliant short 4 at the 16th, others will say the short 12thWebsite: aberdoveygolf.co.uk
Bernard Darwin is one of the greatest golf writers of his or any generation and he was introduced to Aberdovey by his uncle, Colonel A Ruck, who designed the original nine holes here. Darwin played Aberdovey as a boy, was the club’s first captain, he would play in the Walker Cup and his love of the course is like no other.
‘There are several very excellent courses in Wales but I am quite determined to put Aberdovey first – not that I make it for any claim that it is the best, not even on the strength of its alphabetical pre-eminence, but because it is the course that my soul loves best of all the courses in the world,’ he writes in his book, The Golf Courses Of The British Isles.
The final sentence here is written on the wall of the club’s Darwin’s Bar in the clubhouse.
‘Every golfer has a course for which he feels some such blind and unreasoning affection. When he is going to this his golfing home he packs up his clubs with a peculiar delight and care; he anxiously counts the diminishing number of stations that divide him from it, and finally steps out on the platform, as excited as a schoolboy home for his holidays, to be claimed by his own familiar caddie. A golfer can only have one course towards which he feels quite in this way, and my one is Aberdovey.’
Established in 1892 Aberdovey is one of the oldest courses in Wales and the birthplace of the Welsh Golfing Union.
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Courtesy Aberdovey Golf Club
Aberdovey Golf Club Course Review
Aberdovey’s location is a spectacular one, benefitting from the Snowdonia National Park, the mouth of the Dovey Estuary and the foothills of the Cambrian Mountains. And, if you are going to play here, try and arrive by train.
From the platform to the clubhouse it will take you something like 30 seconds before you have a drink in your hand and asking the barman a question on Newcastle United from the past three decades – incredibly he will get every single result and scorer right.
Aberdovey can play as long as 6,777 yards, from the club’s Darwin championship tees, but it remains a brilliant mix of championship and holiday golf. The course has been tinkered with by many of the greats; Harry Colt was brought in by Darwin before the First World War, Herbert Fowler’s contribution in 1920 did the bulk of what now sits here and James Braid came in, made it 500 yards longer, 29 bunkers tougher and, a few years later, the members voted to undo the work as it had become less fun.
It’s often described as an out-and-back, old-fashioned links but the actual routing is more of a 90-degree bend with the par 3s crossing the course. A brilliant description was to liken it to a ‘badly tied bow tie’.
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Courtesy Aberdovey Golf Club
The first of those short holes comes at the 3rd and is named ‘Cader’ after the local mountain Cader Idris. Here the tee shot is played over a mountainous dune, a once cavernous bunker has become a grassy bank and the green expanded.
The most-photographed hole will be the par-3 12th, which sits on top of a hill and will likely get the nerve ends twitching in fear of missing the putting surface.
Aberdovey boasts an awful lot of excellent par 4s, many of them requiring something special with a mid to long iron/wood to find the putting surface. But the real gem in the pack comes at the 16th, a strategic short par 4 of 285 yards where there really is very little merit in getting the timber out.
But, with the railway line sitting over your shoulder, you still try and thread the needle and pull off the unlikely. The clever money is on playing an iron from the tee and instead making a mess of the wedge in.
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Aberdovey continues to finish with a flourish, the last two holes providing a fitting finale.
“I find it very hard to criticise or appraise at its just worth. One thing may safely be said, that it provides a fine school for iron shots, whether short or long. There are a great many holes, perhaps too many, which need a long iron shot for the second and these shots have to be played from every variety of stance and lie on to greens that are good but uniformly small. There is, too, no better course for teaching the little chip or run up – the shot which professionals play so wonderfully well, and many amateurs play so badly,” writes Darwin.
How little has changed.
Courtesy Aberdovey Golf Club
Final verdict
Let me introduce you to a town called Barmouth. This is a seaside town that has no golf club but it does have a railway station. And an hour south is Aberdovey and 20 minutes north is Royal St David’s so you can very easily park your car for a few days and not touch it again.
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We’ve done this twice as a group and the train ride from Barmouth to Aberdovey is pretty much perfect and drops you off literally on the doorstep of the golf club. It’s hard to think of a more stress-free start and end to a golfing day than the one that awaits you in on the Welsh coast.
If that does seem like too much effort there is also some cracking dormy accommodation on site, that run alongside the 18th.
Courtesy Aberdovey Golf Club
Aberdovey is a banker of a top-4 course in Wales with Royal Porthcawl, Royal St David’s and Pennard. Porthcawl would generally get the nod for the top spot, then it’s pretty much down to who you ask and almost a toss of a coin. Having played Aberdovey and St David’s a handful of times I’ve certainly changed my mind between the two.
As an overall course I’d probably go for Aberdovey though, for whatever reason, I prefer the romance of St David’s. Either way they’re both elite courses so get yourself to Barmouth.
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Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
For more information, please visit the club’s website here
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