GOLF


Manchester Golf Club


If It Ain’t Broke


Regarded as one of the finest courses in the northwest, Manchester Golf Club’s Course Manager Matt Shimwell and his team have their work cut out to manage an area that covers over 240 acres!


attitude, with its punishingly long fairway and a runaway table-top green to welcome what would be a potential green in regulation. Added to this are the steep banks coming into many of the greens, and the tendency for holes to play longer or shorter than true yardage. The bunkers are in his trademark natural, dropped state.


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It is a throwback to a time each golf course felt truly different; a unique and challenging moorland-heathland arrangement, on which unusual and score-affecting hazards lie. This means that Matt Shimwell, 36, the Course Manager, can focus on maintenance and superficial work without ever worrying that the course needs a shake-up.


Whilst there is some pressure to maintain the


course’s prestigious reputation, this is also a blessing which allows the club to focus its efforts - as the saying goes: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Significant local events, such as those organised by the PGA and the national youth Reed Trophy, are held at Manchester because of the prestige it holds. They were top-three finalists for ‘England Golf Championship Venue of the Year 2017’. It’s sometimes difficult to put one’s finger on what makes a non-coastal course special, because there is such relative variety in links set- ups. I asked Matt what he thinks: “It’s got a links feel to it. It’s not your typical parkland course. It’s controversial to say it, but parklands can be very samey, can’t they? You tend to go up and down in straight lines; maybe a dogleg here and there; treelined fairways.”


22 PC August/September 2018


onsidered amongst the finest non- links courses in northern England, Manchester Golf Club has retained its design for over a century - a quintessential Harry Colt.


The third hole typifies this Colt signature


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