Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Bishop's Stortford Golf Club is an 18-hole private parkland course situated on Dunmow Road on the eastern edge of Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire. The club dates to around 1910, though records suggest a golf course may have existed on the site as early as 1907, initially laid out by Douglas Rolland, a professional who was twice runner-up in the Open Championship. James Braid, who was a cousin of Rolland, visited the course prior to its formal opening on 11 June 1910, and there is contemporary evidence that H.S. Colt also contributed to the course's early bunker and hazard design. The layout occupies a gently undulating 140-acre estate and plays to a par of 71 over 6,404 yards, with a course rating of 74.1 and a slope of 127 from the white tees.
The course is richly planted with a wide variety of mature specimen trees and flowering shrubs, which frame the fairways and define the character of individual holes. The terrain is mildly undulating throughout, making it a comfortable walk while still rewarding careful course management. Among the stronger holes, the 425-yard 5th features a green that slopes from front to back with a lone pine protecting the right side, while the 459-yard 16th — the stroke index one hole — leads to a well-bunkered green tilting front-right to back-left. The 167-yard 8th par three is played from an elevated tee to a green positioned behind a pond, where over-hitting leaves a treacherous downhill putt. The back nine is generally regarded as the more challenging and scenic half of the course.
The M11 motorway, which opened in the late 1970s, skirts the south-east corner of the property, resulting in the loss of only one tee and one green. An earlier curiosity in the club's history was a railway halt called Hockerill Halt, which opened in late 1910 on a line running through the layout and was used by golfers and the public alike until its closure in the early 1950s.
