The 13th hole

The 13th in 1920

Played due west from just west of Big Wood, with bunkers near the tee and three round the green on Swain's plan. In the 1921 final Bert Seymour used the bank here, and his approach finished two yards from the pin. His first putt then stopped partly in Jack Gaudin's line, and Gaudin failed to curl his ball round it and lost the hole and his lead. The Sphere of June 1922 printed a photograph of the big bunkers lying across the approach to the 13th green. Darwin, who knew it as the 7th, says the hole turned away from home again, with big bunkers left and right and a short pitch to a well-guarded green full of slopes.^1,5,6,7,9

After 1936

Became the 7th (328 yards on both cards). A card from a round in October 1949 on the shortened public course still has a 328-yard 8th, probably this hole. After the course closed in 1952, John Swain says, this Hampermill end still looked like a golf course for several years, with the fairways cut short, the rough left long and some bunkers still holding sand.

There today

From just west of Big Wood the hole ran west across the western meadow to a green on the edge of the Hampermill Wood trees, about 140 metres from Hampermill Lane.