Presenting a schizophrenic blend of 21st-century luxury and
chivalric hauteur, this first-of-its-kind English golf resort has a deceptively modest name of The Grove.
Jacuzzis, plasma-screen TVs and Broadband conferencing are
concealed within The Grove’s courtly buildings—one of which dates to 1400 and
all of which provided hearth and home to several Earls of Clarendon. Just a
half-hour’s drive from London proper, the resort’s grandeur is painted across a
300-acre demesne whose fresh-air pleasures include an aristocratic-looking golf
course laid out by the Kingsbarns Kid himself, Kyle Phillips.
Phillips, who’s as hot as a blacksmith’s forge these days,
extended the new-meets-old theme of The Grove when he conceived his 7,170-yard
parkland design. Today’s technology is all there in the irrigation, drainage and
soil mixes, but the course’s visual style and shot characteristics have an
artisan feel that will suggest the possibility of Harry Vardon (or maybe Harry
Colt) appearing from the mist along its fairways. Phillips strives for the
impression that nothing diesel-powered was used to shape his fairways and
greens. “I’m looking back at classic British course architecture and trying to
create great courses whose artificial landforms are indistinguishable from
natural ones,” he explains.
From its Saxon burial ground to its acres of walled gardens,
the property surrounding Phillips’ layout fits seamlessly with the streams,
boundary hedges and roundabouts of Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, the modest
crossroads where this whole fable is set.
But if the scenery is unspoiled, the people who stay here
won’t be. And a fair number of them can be put up in the 211 guest rooms and 16
luxury suites. A staff of 350 will unobtrusively guide Grove guests among the
resort’s three restaurants and dozen-plus spa treatment rooms, as well as tidy
up the croquet lawn and the two 75-foot swimming pools when a day’s play is
over.
