Golf Course Architecture - Issue 59, January 2020

47 returning to the former farmhouse that served as the clubhouse. During WWII however, a huge change to the club and course occurred when the second nine of MacKenzie’s course was compulsory purchased in order to build a hospital, one of many constructed in the area, in this case the US Army 55th General Hospital, for anticipated D-Day and thereafter casualties. At the end of the war, the club thus found itself with only a nine-hole golf course and it played as such until the mid-1970s when some of the hospital land was returned and nine further holes were built by Hawtree and Co. Although some of the new Hawtree holes were built on sections of the former hospital land, most were not, as various buildings and roadways now covered much of that area. One MacKenzie second-nine green located in a far corner of the property however, did manage to escape destruction during the building and operation of the hospital, MacKenzie’s original sixteenth green. This green, originally on the end of a circa 420-yard ‘bogey five’ that played uphill and into the prevailing wind, still exists, unused and unchanged for 80 years, original contours intact, although it should be noted that for a very short period in the 1970s it was used as a practice chipping green. In his 1927 and 1939 booklets about the Worcestershire GC, golf writer Robert Browning described the hole and green as follows: “The run of the ground is slightly in favour of the drive, but the green is on a rising plateau that swings in toward the hole from the right, the face of the plateau in the direct line to the hole being heavily bunkered. It is a difficult approach even for a player who is content to reach the green with his Photos: Courtesy of David Thomas Above, the untouched MacKenzie green at the Worcestershire as it is today and, left, playing as the sixteenth green in 1927