Driving is second nature for members at the Royal
Automobile Club’s Woodcote Park estate, where golf and memories of the freedom of the open road rub shoulders.
Tom James meets Course Manager Bob Wiles and finds that he has been ...
THE DRIVING T
ucked away amid a parade of plush Epsom properties, off the A24 trunk road in Surrey, lies the 400-acre
Woodcote Park estate - home to the famed Royal Automobile Club, a national ‘institution’ whose history is as colourful and dramatic as the manicured parkland site itself.
The club goes back to 1897 when
Frederick Richard Simms and Charles Harrington Moore translated the constitution of the Automobile Club de France (ACF) into English, to create the basis for the Automobile Club of Great Britain and, later, Ireland (ACGBI). Woodcote Park, positioned next door to Epsom racecourse, was first purchased as a country club in 1913, on the site of a twelfth century abbey. The imposing mansion, built in 1679 by Richard Evelyn (brother of diarist John) and mentioned in his diaries by Samuel Pepys, became the clubhouse.
14 However, a fire in 1934 burnt it to the
ground but it was rebuilt in similar classical style, reopening nearly two years later in May 1936. Throughout the 1970s, the Club underwent a programme of expansion and refurbishment, which led to the restoration of the clubhouse and significant improvements to the two 18-hole courses, an achievement largely the masterwork of one man - the then head greenkeeper, now course manager, Bob Wiles. Due to retire in February 2010 after
thirty-three years at the club, and one of the longest-reigning head greenkeepers in the business, Bob has fashioned the sporting estate into the premier facility it is today.
In that time he has met golfing legends such as Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomery, Lee Trevino and Greg Norman, as well as the late and sadly missed comedian Bob Hope, whom
One can only admire the
professionalism and commitment of golfing’s elite when Bob marvels: “Last year’s Open champion, Padraig Harrington, was playing here literally the day after winning the event.” Bob joined the Club on 18 September 1977, moving into the post of head greenkeeper the following month, after working in agriculture, then in the timber trade, at Bishops Castle, Shropshire, before embarking on his marathon greenkeeping stint at Woodcote Park.
The estate boasts two courses - the Old, whose 18th hole sits serenely in front of the grand clubhouse, and the
he met during the Club’s staging of the Bob Hope Classic in 1980. Today, Woodcote Park still hosts international Pro-Am tournaments, notably the Tesco event run straight after the Open Championship.
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