‘Criss-Crosland Heath’, words by Sam
One of the most rewarding parts of Cookie Jar is in finding really good, affordable golf and a recent scheduled visit to Meltham (West Yorkshire) to see a lifelong friend for an evening of drinks and a few holes the following morning created that possibility. When coming up with recommendations for golf on the Sunday morning I was staggered to see that Crosland Heath was only an 8 minute drive away (28 minutes factoring in the round trip to retrieve Jim’s car from the evening before which was left in nearby Holmfirth – the filming location of ‘Last of The Summer Wine’).
Staggered because Crosland Heath is a course I had been hoping to play for a long time. A picture of a towering par 3 green site, the promise of heather , and knowing the good Dr was responsible for its design in 1914, making this one of his early designs before the advent of WWI and his global domination.
I’ll come onto the course shortly, but the town of Holmfirth is significantly more boujie than I recall it looking on a Sunday afternoon when Last of the Summer Wine would appear on our TV as a child. The drab colour palette of 90’s television matched my own mood about the prospect of school the following morning, and was far from my bucket list of towns to visit. Holmfirth is now littered with trendy wine bars, posh eateries and is a world away from the sleepy village that Compo, Norman and Foggy loitered around back then, drinking cups of tea in the cafe and harassing Nora Batty.
Speaking of Foggy, we set off early with heads as thick as the ‘pea souper’ that greeted us when we made the ascension to the top of the land and into the clubhouse.
Crosland Heath – Fog on arrival
The pro seemed to have an abnormally good grasp of meteorology, specifically the fog which rolls in frequently on this high point above the industrial town of Huddersfield, and with his bellwether (the fourth green) still visible from the clubhouse, he was confident that play could commence safely.
The opening par 5 played up a fairly anonymous slope and felt like a pretty pedestrian start to proceedings, familiar to many other long first holes used by golden age architects to get you away from the house. Less than 50 yards of visibility didn’t deter us until we somehow ran out of fairway with no obvious green in sight, now some 400 yards down the hole. Having spotted the silhouettes of the fourball we were chasing – teeing off the second in the distance – we shouted over to enquire about the location of the first green in fear that if we didn’t we’d be lost out here until the fog lifted or – worse still – rescued.
A gesture to a green across the ravine which was not immediately obvious to us, we walked on a further 50 yards to get a sighter of it, and in that moment our adventure at Crosland Heath had begun. The green on this long opener demands an approach across a steep quarry, where it sits on the ledge beyond.
No courses start like this. In fact, I can’t think of any other opening hole which even compares to the first at Crosland. The second tee box where those silhouettes had stood minutes earlier was pointed back across the same quarry, this time we could make out the outline of the greens’ apron 112 yards away, and waited for the call back through the fog to let us know they were clear. This was like playing golf blindfolded, with the course revealing itself in 50 yard increments. Quite a surreal, strange, and – with hindsight – dangerous experience.
Crosland Heath is best known for its one-shotters, and the second was a hell of an introduction to them. Four of the five par 3’s play around this quarry at the top of the course, with the thrill of playing across deep ravines to towering-plateau greens sat high above. The sumptuous drop shot 14th from an observatory with dells and hollows artfully placed is the only exception.
Crosland Heath – 14th green – grass hollows, not bunkers
A rhythm soon developed with the group ahead, waiting for shouts back from the group in front – declareing ‘3rd green clear’, or ‘4th fairway clear’ sounding like something out of Call of Duty – now our way to know when it was safe to play.
As the round developed and visibility increased, one thing that was clear that this wasn’t ‘a quirky course with a few outstanding holes’. It was a course which was consistently strong, with clear Mackenzie themes running throughout. Sparing use of bunkers – which the club have been well served to resist temptation to add to throughout its history – maximise the strategic value of the dells, hollows and natural hazards that exist.
Crosland Heath – 8th & 16th Greens
Now, I don’t think Mackenzie has ever been accused as a ‘minimalist architect’, but even the green surfaces have less undulations and borrows on them than you would typically expect from his other course, some form of compensation no doubt for the golfer where they are demanded to hit smaller targets and where the hazards create enough penalty for an errant shot.
Sadly, we don’t see people build courses on land like Crosland very often. Whilst the soil is no doubt conducive to good golf (fast draining and able to support heather in abundance), the large quarry and natural landforms also create the prospect of some spectacular shots. However, it would no doubt make the process of creating a harmonious routing incredibly difficult.
Mackenzie takes you around in a labyrinth to create different shot types whilst bringing you back to the quarry no less than 4 times. The result is one where those spectacular shots across the dramatic ground are evenly spaced out so the whole thing flows. Staircases around the greens and tees on this corner of the course look almost like an MC Escher drawing, each winding up to a tee, and then back down and onto a green.
An aerial below shows you the course routing.
Joe McDonnell / Don Placek I am not!
Three and a bit hours later we returned, cold to the bone but grinning from ear to ear. Whilst I had come to Crosland Heath expecting to see a few marvellous short holes, and perhaps the odd McKenzie feature (or two), I had not expected the quality of the course to be anything like as strong… or as consistent. It is a provocative design, beautiful and eminently walkable. It sits on some of the highest land of any golf course in the country, but it doesn’t feel like hill climbing. It is a relatively flat piece of land that you manoeuvre your way around, and feels like the sort of course you could play on repeat, and certainly grow old on.
Crosland Heath – 4th Green
The club is booming. When we enquired earlier in the week, only one tee time was spare. They’ve invested enormously in improvements to the clubhouse facilities and unless you are going to pester the one person you know in West Yorkshire who plays here for a tee time, the club don’t have an abundance of space for visitors on Sundays. Such is the demand for golf from its busy playing membership (and who can blame them)!
It makes you think just how good the members at Crosland Heath have it. No desperate need to chase rankings, or feel like they need to abandon the past. They know how special the course is and are happy to leave it at that.
Driving home in the pouring rain, listening to a Fried Egg podcast with Gil Hanse talking about creating great municipal golf in America, making good architecture accessible to all had me thinking about how spoilt we are in Britain. Crosland Heath is by no means a municipal facility, but it is extraordinarily good value, accessible and a poster child for sustainable golf. The type of golf Britain was built on.
A potent series of holes which mainline themselves straight into your soul, without ever feeling gimmicky or contrived.
Crosland Heath is very pure, indeed.
