Aberdovey Golf Club

It says much for Aberdovey that among the legions captivated by this classic links course are two golfing greats from different times and backgrounds. Bernard Darwin, of Cambridge and The Times, was a top amateur - he played in the first Walker Cup match in 1922 - and the first literary giant of the game. Ian Woosnam, from a Welsh border farm, fought his way up through the professional ranks to become Wales first major championship winner. They both fell in love with Aberdovey. Darwin was there when the club was founded in 1892 but remembers golf being played on that precious strip of turf between the sea shore and hills in the early 1880s when they cut nine flowerpots into the soil as holes. Woosnam has also found it to be a spiritual home and has sought respite there room the demands of the world circuit. The course is just outside the pretty resort at the mouth of the Dovey and winds a traditional route out and back, with sand dunes as sentinels and the wind as friend and foe. It is a place worth a long pilgrimage for any golfer.