West Lancashire

The West Lancashire Golf Club at Blundellsands or ‘West Lancs’ in affectionate parlance, holds a special spot in my golfing heart along with Brancaster, Rye, Brora, Perranporth, Littlestone, Seascale, Pennard, RND, Askernish, Goswick, and Southerness, which all give that wonderful dry, shaggy, raw, feel of traditional ‘running-game’ links golf. One would not describe them as ‘tidy’ or immaculate’ and the word ‘natural’ more comes to mind.

The late John Muir, one of only three greenkeepers who have UK golf holes named after them.

The Club was lucky to have had the skillful, late John Muir as Head Greenkeeper since the early 80s to 2014, who maintained a high percentage of fine grasses across these tumbling sand dunes that used to be called The Warren, sited between the railway and the Mersey channel.

Jim Arthur, consultant agronomist to the R&A and West Lancashire in the 1980s, pointedly said that John is not of the view that ‘green is great’ and, when the new watering system became operational in 1987, it was only used ‘at John Muir’s discretion’.

Jim Arthur’s view, at a time when greenkeeping was relatively simple, was that the cardinal sin of greenkeeping was over-watering. Yet many golfers equate green with quality. If it’s brown, it’s dead, they say, and some greenkeepers provide colour simply to please those members. “Nice and green” is a contradiction in terms. You cannot have it both ways. Over-watering is linked to over-feeding, as first it changes the grass species to Poa annua (meadow grass) and then produces soft, spongy, target greens.

It is worth noting that Jim Arthur laid the blame for this trend to over-watering on the shoulders of professional golfers, like Bobby Locke, whose aim was to take the element of chance out of the game and their income. The same influence is around today. The ‘rub of the green’ phrase should be heard more often if recreational golf is focused on enjoyment.

The Club has chosen well in appointing Stuart Hogg previously at St Anne’s Old Links and Fortrose & Rosemarkie and he has continued a policy of fine grass greenkeeping and indeed FineGolf has increased the ‘Joy-to-be-alive’ FineGolf rating for the course from three to four stars following some extra bunker definition and an increase in fine grasses of fescues and browntop bents, which gives a firmness and consistency of bounce which the playing of the running game needs.

Both John Muir and Stuart Hogg are members of FineGolf’s  Pantheon of the finest greenkeepers.

18th & clubhouse

There is not a single weak golf hole but, West Lancashire being such a favourite of mine, I hope the members will allow me two outspoken criticisms.

While the clubhouses at Royal Birkdale and Castle Stuart have been described by some as out-of-place in their 1930s style, they are beautiful in comparison to this utilitarian monstrosity that is the ugliest of buildings and typical of the appalling modernist concrete architecture started in the 1960s!

William King, the previous able secretary, tries to suggest that the building has an architectural unity and is striking, in the comments below, while I have also recently received thoughtful comment from William Hill, with which I am in agreement and am happy to pass on:-

“Recent refurbishment inside has made it very comfortable with a magnificent viewing platform across the nearby ninth and eighteenth greens and over the treeless links to the copse situated alongside the farthest away fourteenth and fifteenth holes”. A smart sitting-out area has also been added along with a ninth hole halfway facility.

Trees at the 14th green in 2014

William usefully introduces my second criticism made in 2014, that the allowing of these inland trees to flourish suggests a weakness in design that needs disguising by giving an unnatural parkland feel to these couple of holes at the far end on this wonderful archetypical links course.

I was pleased to find in 2024 that the trees around the fourteenth green (Bell) have been cut back so they should no longer interfere with play and those behind the green on the south side have gone, thereby allowing the sun and wind to dry out the raised green and help with the fine grass agronomy. My partner suggested a drainage ditch to be cut along the left of the fairway which is an interesting idea which Mackenzie Ebert might consider when they come to evaluate this hole and reduce the carry for the higher handicappers.

As for the fifteenth hole (Sniggery – where did that wonderful name come from!? -It’s a nod to nearby Sniggery Wood which has a pond. A ‘snig’ is a young eel, and they grow and are later harvested from the pond and other waterways) after a drive to avoid the trees and the railway, a medium iron into the prevailing wind is to a beautifully bunkered green with a mid-left front bunker and mid-right back bunker. A bale out to the right for a bump-and-run up and down can be sensible and does not suggest that the trees should be cut back here.

Having clarified and got that off my chest, let us move on and note that West Lancashire has a very noble heritage, being the oldest Club in Lancashire and, along with Royal Liverpool, was founded by Scots who had come down to the flourishing port of Liverpool to do business in the 1870s.

Tom Ball, Arthur Havers (the Open Champion in 1923) and Ted Jarman were all Professionals here, along with ‘Sandy’ Herd who, when defeating Harry Vardon in the 1902 Open with the new rubber-cored wound ‘Haskell’ ball, had signalled the end of the gutta percha ball (itself a replacement for the original ‘feathery’ ball of the 1840s).

Old Tom Morris, Hilton, J.Low at West Lancashire

Harold Hilton, the great amateur who was twice Open Champion in 1892 and 1897 – who incidentally played off +10 in 1894! (and to think that was with hickory clubs) and is more usually associated with Royal Liverpool – became secretary to the Club in 1901.

It always worried me that Frank Pennink left West Lancashire out of his Golfers Companion until I realised that the present course was designed by Ken Cotton (Pennink’s partner) in 1961, the same year as his book was published, and is a  different layout to the original course that had nine holes on the other side of the railway while the ladies’ course was amalgamated into it. He had no chance to review the new course.

This re-design was a heart-wrenching but inevitable step and the new West Lancashire course has gone on in the modern era to become one of the toughest Open final qualifying courses while also staging the Brabazon in 2004 and sharing the Amateur Championship with Formby in 2009 and many other championships and Open Qualifyers.

The 2nd & 8th

Bernard Darwin’s as usual brilliant prose describes the original course and captures the allure of the ground beneath Cotton’s course: “a country of dells and hollows” in comparison to the flat open country of everyday life to the East of the railway and “plunging suddenly into something much more exciting and romantic”.

The opener (Beacon), more difficult in the mind than reality, is a hole for a gently dog-legging fade and the par five second (Shore) gives thoughts of Woking’s famous ‘Low and Paton’ fourth with two bunkers in the middle of the fairway. If the scratch man wants to get at the green tucked round to the right then perhaps these bunkers should be minimally moved to the left to create more risk/reward for those wanting to open up their approach as per Hogan’s Alley at Carnoustie?

The third (Bowl) is the first of four outstanding par threes, the sixth (Hillside) being my favourite to a small shelf green.

The 156 yd 6th

The seventh (Muir) was made famous by Peter Parkinson, the Assistant Pro to Ted Jarman, when he cut the corner on this 393 yard sharp dogleg, holing-in-one on the 6th of June 1972 and thereby entering the Guinness Book of Records as the longest hole-in-one at the time. Cutting some of this corner and taking on the pot bunkers poses an exciting risk and reward choice to even lesser mortals.

It has become the hole that epitomises the fun to be had at West Lancashire and the Club took the kind decision to call it after John Muir in 2017, making him only the third British greenkeeper to have a hole named after him. The others are the eleventh at Carnoustie after John Philp MBE and the eighteenth at St Andrews Old after Old Tom Morris. Truly fine company.

West Lancashire has some testing straightish  par fours at the fourth (Alt), fifth (Crosby), eighth (Mersey) and ninth (Ridge) going out, though actually Cotton cleverly gives us two tees (1st and 10th) from the clubhouse.

The tenth (New) is a birdie chance and the twelfth (Valley) where we play across a sea of scrub to a high green is a fine, classic, links par three. The next (Bar) has a tight drive from a high tee and a high approach to a small triangular plateau green particularly in a easterly wind can be difficult to stay on and with no bunkers can be an interesting run-up with care.

There are a couple of lengthy par fives (Railway and Blundell) on the inward half and at 6772 yards off the whites, 6246 yards off the yellows that still has a slope of 135, the course is quite long enough (championship tees-7030 yards).

We finish with a classic, well defended par three (Ince) among the dunes and another straight fine par four (Cuckoo Hill).

Christie O’Connor sen., regarded as one of the best long-iron players ever, described Ted Jarman, the Professional here for 36 years, as “the best 1 iron player I can recall”. He had plenty of practice with it, as this course is about running the ball below the wind, keeping out of the wiry rough and being creative in your shot selection. You have to know how to ‘bump and run’. The inland player who lets his ball run high on the cross-wind may well need to re-stock at the Pro’s shop after nine!

The Club looks after its natural flora with low-lying dewberry and burnett rose among the 221 species of plant identified across the links, while rare breeding skylarks and stonechat nest on the course.

The 13th green

Donald Steel, who is on FineGolf’s advisory panel and who arguably has given more to maintain traditional standards across our fine courses along with Gordon Irvine than anybody else over the last twenty five years, sums up West Lancashire beautifully:

“Only in Britain can one sample the true flavour of seaside golf, of which West Lancashire is a perfect example. Within the framework of the coastal dunes and the railway, a glorious balance unfurls. There are humps and hollows, greens on plateaux and greens in dells, contrast and comparative shelter in the inland holes and everywhere a sea of rough, sandy wilderness to punish the wrongdoer. On summer evenings, as the sun casts its shadows on the links, the shipping slips quietly by on the Mersey and there is time to reflect on the distant beauty, the realisation occurs that the West Lancashire enjoys the best of all worlds.”

The Blundell family, who have been Lords of the Manor of nearby Little Crosby since 1362, have provided a succession of presidents to the Club and hopefully this leased land of Blundellsands links will continue to give that ‘joy to be alive’ feeling to many more generations of members and visitors in the future.

See The West Lancashire Golf Club, a history of golf at Blundellsands, by Barry Coyne, the Club’s archivist, published in 2008 and his update “150 years of Golf at Blundellsands” published in 2023 on the occasion of the Club’s 150th anniversary. The book is pleasantly set out with not too long paragraphs, with people’s names highlighted among the many great photographs and comprehensive history and much interesting chat about golf.

Reviewed by Lorne Smith 2009 and updated 2015 and 2024.

Your comment about the clubhouse is personal taste too strongly expressed. The two white horizontal lines reflect the flatness of the ground well; the vertical line to the east side of the building creates unity. The building is not a collection of boxes for different functions within the building (cp Hillside) but has a unity and is striking.

Dear William,
I can understand what you say but however hard I try I come back to see this modernist apparition sticking out like a sore thumb from one of my favourite clubs!
kind regards
Lorne