Formby Ladies – Golf Course Review

Golfer View Rating: 77%

“Top 100” Ranking: 91st (England)

Summary

A beautiful and highly enjoyable heathland-links course set among mature pines and dunes, offering a wonderfully natural combination of strategic golf and visual appeal. An interesting and varied test that rewards accurate positioning, and while perhaps not as imposing as some of England’s famous links, it is a genuine gem and a very enjoyable place to play.

Golfer’s Tips

• Although not technically a links course, Formby plays like one. Firm, tight lies afford the chance to run shots into greens, and keeping the ball in play and where you can see it is often the right move.
• The eleventh is a tricky tee shot, with the narrow fairway turning around a protruding mound on the right. Attempts to cut the corner can be foolhardy, as the carry is longer than it looks and some pretty thick rough can catch your ball before it reaches the shorter grass.

Signature Holes

• 4th – a fine short par four. Fairway turns gently from left to right, with pines lining the right hand side and around the back of an excellent raised green with testing deep bunkers short left and right.
• 10th – a wonderful driving hole from a raised tee, the generous fairway reaching out and up towards a raised green that is framed by dense pines atop mounds around the left and back.

Review:

Formby Ladies is a wonderful place to play golf. Make no mistake, the shortened length is geared towards its female membership, but there is no weakening in quality or style versus its male compatriot – a terrific design that can test any golfer.

Based on the same plot of land as the original male golf course, Formby Ladies sits in the middle of the men’s course, but is itself a fine design carved amongst sand dunes, heather and the famous pines trees adorned by the club’s emblem.

Starting with a relatively gentle opening set of holes, albeit the second is a longer par four that turns gently from left to right, the course design really strikes you from the fourth hole, which is a superb short par four with a raised plateau green cocooned by tall pines. The follow up holes sees the course get further into its stride and do what Formby Ladies does best – the fifth is an excellent yet testing short par three played uphill to a raised sloping green with severe drop offs at the front, right and rear, and the sixth then presents a fine longer par four from a raised tee with another section of pines on the right flank providing the shape to the hole.

Surfaces are excellent in general, but the greens in particular are superb – the land is relatively flat aside from some natural elevation changes due to sand dunes which are used expertly to create feature raised tees and greens, and this subtlety also translates to the putting surfaces that run wonderfully but offer just enough borrow to make a player think.

The early part of the back nine is a wonderful stretch, providing holes that are visually appealing but with no little challenge. The tenth is an excellent driving hole from a raised tee, and the next two that follow are excellent testing holes – eleven has shades of Burnham & Berrow with a semi blind tee shot played over a mound to a diagonal fairway, and twelve is a picturesque par three, its small, sloping green sitting nicely in front of pines and among sand dunes.

After the short par three sixteenth that plays slightly uphill into a narrow green with drop offs either side, the course finished with two back-and-forth par fours with the eighteenth tee providing a picturesque view of the fairway flanked by heather with the wonderful old clubhouse beyond.

This is a ladies’ course, so it perhaps seems unfair to mark down a course for perhaps missing a couple of longer par fives in place of a couple of the more straight forward short par fours, but this is picking hairs – Formby Ladies is an excellently designed heathland test that rightly holds its own place independently within the English top 100.

https://www.formbyladiesgolfclub.com

Other similar courses:

• Burnham & Berrow – Golf Course Review
• Royal Cinque Ports – Golf Course Review
• Royal St George’s – Golf Course Review

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