Green fees are a tenth of the club next door. The national open is coming here anyway.
The green fee at Downs Park is a tenth of what the private club next door charges. The car park is gravel. The clubhouse is a hut that sells tea.
Next summer the national open will be played here, and not next door.
How a council course got the call
Downs Park was laid out in the 1930s on chalk grassland the town already owned. For most of its life it was known for slow greens and a queue at the first tee.
Six years ago the council handed day-to-day control to its head greenkeeper and a small committee of players, with one instruction: break even.
"We stopped trying to look like the place next door," the greenkeeper said. "Chalk drains itself. We let the course be what the ground wanted."
They cut the watering by half, let the rough grow and widened the fairways.
What the selectors saw
- Firm, fast greens in a dry summer when other courses browned
- Room for crowds on the open downland
- A railway station twelve minutes away on foot
- A course most of the field had never played
The last point mattered most, according to one member of the panel. Nobody arrives with an advantage.
Who plays here
On a weekday the tee sheet includes school groups, shift workers and a society of retired bus drivers who have had the 07:10 slot for twenty years.
They will keep it during the championship week. That was a condition the committee set, and the organisers accepted it.
The neighbours
The private club has offered its car park and practice ground. The greenkeeper says relations are good. He has also noticed several of its members on his first tee.
