The Gower Golf Club

the gower golf club

After the splendid weather of day one of our golf holiday, day two dawned damp and overcast. Yup, this is more like the weather we were expecting from Wales in October.  The weather didn’t improve on the short trip out of central Swansea and a light drizzle had begun to fall by the time we teed off.

The first hole is a very straightforward 308 yard downhill off the yellow tees, with a wide open fairway and no real danger between the tee and the flag.

With my shiny new Ping G10 driver, bought especially for this trip, of course I had to go for the green!  As luck would have it, I caught the tee shot quite well and ended the hole with a reasonably straightforward par as the rain began to fall a little more heavily.

After Pennard, the Gower was a very straightforward and pleasant club course to play. Plenty of room on most fairways to forgive the higher handicapper’s loose drives and more often than not, a good view of the ball from almost all parts of the course. That being said, there are some very big and tricky holes, not least of which is the 465 yard par 5  eighth, a huge downhill drive towards a lake and an inviting fairway. (The eighth is the only hole with a stepladder next to the tee so you can spot your fellow players’ ball as it descends the hillside – hopefully towards the middle of the fairway below.)

Naturally the lake is magnetic and I failed to score in a rather dismal yet eyecatching hole!

The par 3 ninth looks easy, but with trees all around, is anything but, as you have to avoid the trees both off the tee and onto the green! Not so easy as it looks and another dismal 4.

As the weather deteriorated we soon found ourselves playing in cloud – very wet cloud at that and we were wondering whether the course would be closed as the visibility became so poor at one stage. In fact, so bad was the visibility that two of our fellow players actually set off down the eighth again on their way to the eighteenth, not having seen the stepladder at the side of the tee owing to the dramatically reduced visibility.

With a friendly club pro and local members, we liked The Gower Club very much and resolved to come back again when the weather wasn’t quite so disastrous.