Cotswold Downs is renowned for the quality of its bent grass greens, and right now they are as good as anything I’ve played. Absolutely stunning and flawless in terms of looks, colour, pace and firmness. PGA Tour quality. Short-siding myself on the first green my chip was a touch firm and the ball kept moving relatively slowly until it reached a slope and finished some distance from the pin. The green contours on the front nine (which has the best holes) are works of art and deceptively tricky to judge pace and line. Putting on them is instructive, and with no one behind me I enjoyed stroking long putts to imaginary pin positions. Cotswold is recovering from the floods (the back nine was closed for some time after a bridge on 18 washed away), although the par-5 ninth remains a short par 4 due to a high water table on the upper fairway. Access to the par-3 seventh is tricky due to the wooden cart path through the wetlands being damaged. I was surprised by the number of bunkers, about 100 in total. There are 13 pot bunkers in a cluster short right of the green at the sixth!
