Cowdray Golf Club’s £1 million course upgrade

Earlier this year Cowdray Golf Club reopened its main course following a £1 million upgrade.

Cowdray Golf Club in Sussex reopened its 18-hole championship golf course this April, following an extensive £1 million course improvement project and redesign that took place over the winter.

The greenkeeping team

Jonathan Russell, Cowdray’s CEO, thanked the greenkeeping team, led by course manager Jonathan Smith, who worked tirelessly alongside the contractors throughout the process. He then thanked Tim Allen, Cowdray’s director of golf, for the culmination of two and half years planning and working towards the completion of the project.

Tim Allen said: “It was an incredibly proud moment to see the project effectively coming to a completion. There has been a lot of hard work gone into the process, but this has always been mirrored by the excitement of the scale of the work. The whole team have been fantastic, and we all hope that members and all golfers really enjoy the improvements for many, many years to come.”

The project on the main course included a full rebuild and design of all bunkers and pathway networks, along with some sympathetic landscaping around some green complexes.

Working in conjunction with golf course architect Will Swan from Swan Golf Designs and contractor Profusion, the ambitious timeframe was completed in time for the start of the golfing season.

The bunkers have all been built to the highest technical specification and are in keeping with the wider landscape of the course. Indeed, acknowledging the original design by Tom Simpson, 120 years ago, was a vital part of the project.

The new China Clay sand promotes a visually stimulating challenge to the golfer and each bunker is framed with native rough grasses, in a similar fashion to the past.