Woodhill has an excellent honours board in the clubhouse corridor, and every albatross on the course has been recorded. I was surprised to see there have been four aces in the last 20 years on the par-4 ninth hole, an attractive risk-and-reward par 4, with water right of the green and fairway. It plays 330 metres from the club tees, so it’s not a hole I suspected might yield that many. There’s only been one ace for instance at the downhill 300-metre 15th where you would expect more. (The big surprise was a hole-in-one on the 428-metre eighth! However, I’m told it happened when the hole had been temporarily shortened to a par 3 in 2001.) Woodhill’s bent grass greens are outstanding; much of the poa in them has disappeared. Greenkeeper Hugo van den Berg has been inter-seeding three times during the growing season with an abundance of bent, in September, January and March. The result is impressive.
