Eighty years ago, if you lived in Europe, had some land and some money, and
wanted to build a top-quality golf course, the go-to guy was Tom
Simpson—assuming you could put up with his act. Picture yourself, the course
owner, at a site visit. You’re out on a boggy moor in your tweeds and wellies
contemplating a nascent greensite when a vehicle approaches from over the
brae. It’s neither a truck nor tractor, but a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. From
the backseat emerges what appears to be a fugitive from the Cannes Film
Festival, sporting an embroidered cape, horn-rimmed sunglasses, a floppy beret,
and an attitude—Tom Simpson has arrived.
Simpson came from money, was
educated at Cambridge, and worked briefly as a lawyer before turning to golf
course design. A scratch player at venerable Woking Golf Club near London, he
knew the game and also knew how to cultivate the carriage trade—among his
clients were the Duke of Windsor, Lord Mountbatten and two Barons de Rothschild.
It is Simpson who is credited with dubbing the 1920s and ’30s the Golden Age
of golf course architecture, and he did his part, with designs at Cruden Bay in
Scotland, the Berkshire near London and New Zealand Golf Club, as well as widely
lauded renovations of Ireland’s Ballybunion and England’s Sunningdale. But
his best work may have been in France: Chantilly, Fontainebleau and the course
that is ranked first in the nation, Morfontaine.
In 1927 a member of the
French aristocracy, the 12th duc de Gramont, hired Simpson to build a course on
his estate 30 miles north of Paris. Initially, Morfontaine was intended for the
private enjoyment of the duke and his friends, but it was such a success that
within three years it became an extremely private club with an international
membership. Virtually no one plays unless accompanied by a member. And be
warned—although there are 450 members, only 12 of them are American.
I
managed to gain access and found myself in front of a pair of austere iron gates
with an intercom to the side. In the best French I could muster, I announced
myself, and sacre bleu, the gates parted. From there it was another mile or so
of winding driveway through the course to the modest ivy-covered clubhouse.
There was a light mist and my initial impression was that I had been
transported to Northern California. The rolling, dew-covered fairways lined with
towering trees brought to mind Olympic and San Francisco Golf
Club.
My tee time was 9 a.m. but I had missed it by five
minutes. Happily, that wasn’t a big issue since the only other people playing
that morning were a member and his young son. However, they already had hit
their tee shots when the secretary and I approached. When they saw us coming,
the dad gave me one of those disdainful looks for which the French are justly
famed.
“What is this?” he said.
The
secretary rattled off an explanation I couldn’t follow—the member didn’t seem to
buy it either.
“What is his handicap?” he asked.
“Six,” I replied.
Grudgingly, dad and son stood aside, dad looking peevishly at his watch.
Apparently he, as I, had a plane to catch.
Rarely have I been less
prepared—or more intimidated—for an opening tee shot. Without so much as a
practice swing, I managed to neck one to the inside corner of the 451-yard
dogleg right, then fairly ran after it, father and son skulking in my wake.
My thinned 6-iron approach must have looked from a distance like a canny
knockdown
because it actually drew applause from the dad. Three minutes
later, I exited the green, having missed the birdie putt but saved face.
Throughout the rest of the morning, both pere et fils waved cheerily from
neighboring fairways.
The next 17 holes were serenity itself, three hours of
misty solitude on a sleeping beauty of a course. This is ground made for
golf—sand-based heathland that rises and falls almost constantly but never
precipitously. There was the sense that Simpson might have plotted his holes in
any number of ways and come up with an enthralling course, but the choices he
made were fine ones.
Morfontaine is a par 70 of 6,545 yards (5,985 meters).
Five holes are par 3s and among the 13 others, three bend right, four move left
and six are straight. All are defined—more certainly than any course I can
recall—by trees, hundred foot-high sylvestre pines (or Scotch pines, as we know
them).
The short holes are charmers. None is more than 200 yards but all are
guarded staunchly by lace-edged bunkers. Fairway bunkers, however, are scarce.
Simpson generally disdained them, saying that “any feature that acts as a
lighthouse to define a channel or one that lends assistance in judging distance,
is definitely to be deplored.”
The standout hole of the front nine is
No. 7, a 428-yarder that plays 250 yards uphill over a collection of rocks that
looks like a miniature Stonehenge, then turns hard to the left and downhill to
an artfully contoured green. It is followed by another leftward dogleg—this one
almost 90 degrees—that demands close attention on both the tee shot and
approach.
Everything about Morfontaine is understated. There is no pro shop
(or pro for that matter), the bar and dining room are tasteful but spare, and
the little white scorecard couldn’t be simpler—just hole numbers, pars,
distances and handicap strokes. The minimalism is most evident at the conclusion
of the first nine. There is no halfway house, just a water fountain and next to
it a water bowl for man’s best amis. (As at many British courses, dogs are
welcome.)
In fact, there is a decidedly British feel about this place. Thanks
to the sandy soil, it plays hard and fast, almost like a links, and although the
fairways and greens are in fine condition, there is no manicuring, just a
confident, shabby gentility.
Each nine starts with the same sequence of
pars: 4–3–5–3. No. 10, however, is considerably tougher than the opening hole.
Recently, American architect Kyle Phillips updated the course, and his biggest
change was to add 50 yards to the back tee of this hole, which now plays 475
yards uphill.
Neither 11 nor 13 plays more than 150 yards, but the greens
are about as welcoming as a French waiter. No. 13 offers an unusual challenge: a
tree that, depending on the tee and hole locations, can be smack on one’s
intended line of flight. Simpson may have had this hole in mind when he said, “a
course with any pretensions to greatness must have its imperfection.”
The
course ends with a 3 and a 5. Picturesque No. 17 plays across a valley to a
green backed by a 20-foot high wall of bright-green ferns. Perhaps fearing a
leafy grave, I flinched a bit on my 8-iron and found a deep front bunker. A
bogey brought me to the last hole needing a birdie to break 80. Since it was a
par 5 of less than 500 yards, I figured I had a chance. I still felt that way
after my pushed tee shot into the rough, a bit less that way after my pulled
second into the pines, and abandoned all hope when my attempt to skitter a
4-iron through a bunker simply skittered into it. Very rarely have I shot 81
in a more blissful place.
There are many better reasons to go to
Paris—foie gras and escargots, Musee d’Orsay and the Louvre, for example—but
there is one masterpiece no museum can contain: a course as sweet as crepes
suzettes called Morfontaine.
