New Zealand

A thorough restoration of a Simpson heathland classic

New Zealand is a wonderful classic course in the heathlands of Surrey near London. The first layout was done by Samuel Mure Fergusson in 1895, on land owned by HF Locke-King, who became famous after building the world’s first motor racing circuit Brooklands on his estate. Fergusson stayed on as secretary after building the golf course, and similar to Colt at Sunningdale he kept tinkering with the course over the next thirty years.

After the death of Fergusson, the course was completely redesigned in 1931 by Tom Simpson, with the assistance of Philip Mackenzie Ross. They changed several holes completely in the routing, including some new greens, but for the most part focused on improving the bunkering and green surrounds. Specifically, they introduced the lace edged bunkers so characteristic for Simpson.

The course runs through a dense pine and oak forest with lots of large rhododendron bushes at the edges of the holes. However, the thing that is most prominent are the large areas of heather bordering the fairways and occupying the carries. New Zealand might be one of the few golf courses in the world where the heather seems to be winning against the grass....

The course starts off with a small loop of 5 holes that returns back to the clubhouse. These first five holes have a lot of variety from two medium length par 3 holes to 2 very long par 4 holes and a medium length par 4 that starts the round off. Following this initial smaller loop is the larger loop of 13 holes that traverses the site east to west. In total the course has five par 3 holes and several very long and very short par 4 holes, making it tough to score well on this par 68.

Below you see a picture of the restored twelfth hole green bunker at New Zealand GC.  

Over the years the club did not alter much to the design that Simpson left behind. Only one green seems to have been changed (the ninth green) and s few bunkers were changed, added, and filled in. However, the biggest change has been that over the years very little was been done to restrain the tree and rhododendrons growth along the holes, leading to the playing corridors becoming more and more narrow. The same entropy effect was visible in the fact that most of the bunkers had lost their characteristic Simpson style of lace edges.

In 2015 the club retained IVGD to help them start a restoration process, to bring back many of the typical Simpson elements that over time had been lost. The first project was the restoration of the first , second, eight, twelfth and fourteenth holes, where a lot of the work focused on bunkers, green surrounds and tees. The bunkers are being renovated in a style in keeping with Simpson’s work, with diagonal ‘fingers’ of heather being reintroduced into several of them.

The second project was restoring the third, fifth and eighth holes, again with a strong focus on the bunker style and the green surrounds. Our third project has been to restore the sixth, seventh and thirteenth holes, which included restoring the famous “doughnut” bunker that lies between the seventh and thirteenth green.

In the next few years, we will be working on the remaining holes which are the fourth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth. Most of the work is done in the winter, in such a matter that the members have minimal disturbance during their play. IVGD is closely involved with most works, which so far have been carried out by contractor Conor Walsh Ltd.

"New Zealand is sui generis. It does not compete with other courses, but sets its own standard and lives up to it. If anyone wants to play a friendly game, uncrowded and unseen, to have a good lunch in pleasant company, and get home early to London, there is no place like New Zealand."