The 9th hole

The 9th in 1920

Played west along the southern edge of the course, past a round mound and a long mound, to a green with a bunker beside it. In the morning round of the 1921 News of the World final Bert Seymour drove poorly here but still halved the hole in four. After nine holes he and Jack Gaudin had taken 39 strokes each. In the afternoon, says the match report, both men played it badly. Gaudin went over the green in two and then back off the other side, while Seymour's putt of about a yard went only halfway. The hole was halved again, and Seymour reached the turn one up. Bernard Darwin, who knew it as the 3rd, says it came at the end of the long slope and called for a high shot from a high place across a valley.^{1,5,6,9,12,14}

After 1936

Became the 3rd, cut from 382 to 354 yards on the later card. A card from a round on the shortened public course in October 1949 also has a 354-yard hole, its 4th, so this hole was probably still in play then. The public course closed on 31 March 1952.

There today

Wholly inside today's fields. The hole ran west, 50 to 60 metres in from the Hayling Road and Ashburnham Drive houses, to a green just north-west of the Ashburnham Drive entrance.

Look for

The council's information board at the Ashburnham Drive entrance, which shows Swain's plan, stands roughly 75 metres south-east of where this green lay.