Wildernesse – Golf Course Review

Golfer’s Tips

• The driving range is a long way from the first tee, and having played a number of times I am yet to venture across. However there are driving nets and an excellent practice green and chipping area near the first.
• Keeping it straight off the tee is the name of the game – wayward shots get swallowed by dense trees and bushes lining the fairway, so do sacrifice length if your longer clubs are not behaving. The course is scoreable if your tee shot is in play.
• There is a lovely outdoor seating area at the rear of the clubhouse overlooking the 18th green, so do ensure that you afford yourself a cool beverage after your round on a nice Summer’s day.

Signature Holes

• 2nd – an excellent par 4, which is a fine driving hole, with your tee shot played short and ideally left of an pond that cuts across the right half of the fairway, with the second played to a green which slopes significantly from front right to back left.
• 18th – a very fine finisher. A par 5 with a strong left to right dogleg from a tee box played down through a tunnel of trees, the longer and bolder player will seek to fly the right trees in order to cut the corner and de-lengthen the second shot, which is played back up a gradual hill to an attractive green sat in front of the impressive clubhouse.

Review:

Tight, tree-lined fairways epitomise Wildernesse, which is a beautiful, mature course which is always in great condition.

Sitting on the ‘greensands’ belt in Kent, just outside Sevenoaks, Wildernesse is an often unheralded club that provides an attractive and excellently-kept parkland course.

The round starts with a relatively benign opener, but after that there are a selection of testing par 4s that really sets the tone. The second is a good hole which is played from a tunnel of trees to a dogleg right, around a pond, to a diagonally-sloped green, and the third and fourth are both tight mid-length holes where accuracy from tee is paramount.

The 5th is a attractive but strong par 3, playing to a raised green with significant run-offs short, left and long, and the trickiest green on the course, and the next is a par 5 which is a long dogleg left where an outcrop of dense trees needs to be navigated. The start at Wildernesse feels tough and you can take some satisfaction if you are still playing the same ball and have your score still intact.

7 and 8 provide some respite, as they are shorter and more forgiving, but the front nine is rounded off by a longer par 4 which feels very narrow for anyone with a decent amount of shape on their tee shots. The small road just the other side of the hedge on the left is daunting, but the penalty for leaking right into the trees is nearly as severe. Hit the fairway and you have a downhill approach to one of the more generous greens on the course.

The back nine starts on the other side of the aforementioned road, and the next section of four holes is not as mature as the rest of the course and perhaps lets Wildernesse down a touch. The 10th is a longer par 3 played down to a tiered green, but 11 and 12 are both relatively straight forward back-and-forth par 5s followed by the 13th which is a very short and relatively weak par 3 and certainly not of the same quality as some of the holes on the front.

Flipping back over the road to the main section of the course you finish with more of the same from the front nine – a selection holes where tee shot accuracy is paramount and when hit you are then seeking to find the right angle into some sloping green complexes.

The final hole is an excellent one – a par 5 playing down from an elevated tee through a chute of trees around a dogleg right, with the approach up to a green perched in front of the attractive clubhouse in view of other golfers that have just faced the same thing.

For conditioning alone Wildernesse would sit extremely high in any rankings, and it does provide a very enjoyable round that puts your game to the test, but the aforementioned drawbacks mean that this course is further down the rankings in the area than it otherwise might be. Still definitely worth a visit as a very decent parkland course.

• “Top 100” Ranking: 8th (Kent)
• Golfer View Rating: 69%

https://www.wildernesse.co.uk/

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