Mini Tour @Princes

Posted on behalf or Mr Matthew Jaggs

Myself, Mr Strong, Al Sav and his brother in law Dan headed off to the Kent coast for a very reasonably priced Autumn golf break to Princes Golf club, £99 2 rounds with a night stay at the lodge with dinner and breakfast included.

Our trip there was a little tense as the sat nav kept telling us we would be arrive with not much time before our tee off even though we left plenty early (3 hours early) but turned out the sat nav believed the coastal road into the Princes would take 40mins to traverse whereas in reality it was less than 5 minutes.

Anyway, we made our tee off with enough time for breakfast in the spike bar first and checked in (with free strokesavers for each – just have to fill in a form at the pro shop) to find out we would be playing the championship 9s for our first day (shore and dunes) myself hitting the straightest drive down the first fairway to find one of the pot bunkers and thus begun my adventure of discovering as many bunkers I could over the next 2 days!

Typical Autumn/Winter prep saw some work taking place on some greens but overall the course was well looked after, holes providing different challenges, raised greens, collection of deadly bunkers as tall as a man and run off areas that would make Phil Michelson think about getting the putter out.

Al took the first day with 39 points and an excellent level par back nine on the dunes course, 36 for myself, Mr strong 25 and Dan 28.

2nd day after some beer, cider, wine and baileys (poor Al) at the lodge during our evening stay we entered the clubhouse early to see if could get out before the rain was due to come in the afternoon.

Pro shop was very accommodating and gave us the Dunes and the other 9, the Himalayas, which we could tee off straight away. With the wind up and hangovers present our scoring could not match the previous day, Al’s level par the day before on the dunes was a 6 point nine the next (sorry Al, I had to share). The Himalayas referred to as the members nine is the weaker of the 3 and we all felt if slightly more “with it” we could of scored better but still enjoyable 9 holes with some interesting holes. Scores for final day – Al 17, myself 25, Mr. Strong 28 and Dan 27.
So I therefore scooped the overall for 2 days but also the money got shared around us all on the separate days too.

All in all, a good break and an excellent price to play some links golf.

(If we had one gripe, dinner isn’t free, you receive a 15 supplement to the menu prices, which weren’t informed about till arrival at hotel/bar but none the less still a great price)