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| North Oxford Golf
Club |
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The beautiful parkland North Oxford Golf Club course is one of the greatest golf challenges in Oxfordshire – as well as being best value golf in the city.
It is less than three miles from the dreaming spires of Oxford city centre, and, although it is not a long course, it is an excellent test of golf for the club golfer and professional alike.
The course is a jewel, painstakingly immaculate, and tricky to the extent that only a few can play it to their handicap. That is the great challenge. Four times a year the club throws down the gauntlet to allcomers – if they play the course to their handicap they get their green fee back. Some 68 golfers took up the last challenge and only four managed to reclaim their special challenge-day £15 green fee back.
North Oxford is a thinking golfer’s course. It may look docile, with one par five, eleven par fours and six par three holes over a gently undulating landscape, but it has a habit of biting back.
Long hitters can have an advantage – if they are accurate. But it is strategy rather than strength that is the key to this course with its strategically placed trees, bunkers and a water feature – a staggering sight in the Springtime blossom and autumn gold seasons.
Because it is a members’ club, which gives members a great sense of ownership and involvement, the club has a special ambience and some of the lowest fees in Oxfordshire. That doesn’t mean it is a stuffy club hidebound in its 102 year history. Indeed, it is very much a modern mover and shaker, with lively competitions including mixed tournaments and Texas scramble supper nights in the summer, as well as the monthly medals and trophy competition all year round.
The social calendar is also lively in the club’s revamped clubhouse, with a wide choice of entertainment from sporting dinners, barbecues, discos, and moderately priced gourmet dining experiences from Oxford Fine Dining, the club’s prestigious caterers. The clubhouse is also fast becoming a social venue for north Oxford, used by members for private parties and other organisations for breakfast meetings and community occasions and a very reasonable hiring fee.
I have been a member of several golf clubs, but I have found North Oxford to be the friendliest club of them all. There are roll ups each day and it is always possible to get a challenging game within a few minutes of arriving at the club.
Societies and other visitors are finding the club to be the most hospitable in the area and we try to give them a big welcome. Watch out for the next North Oxford challenge. Could you take on the course and win?
Reviewed by NOGC member Eddie Duller |
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