De Vere Oulton Hall Golf Club

Feature Review - De Vere Oulton Hall

Posted by: Tom Furniss on Tue 04 Nov 2008

"Booked a pre-Stag weekend weekend here through Golfbreaks.com (who were excellent by the way). Firstly, the Hotel itself and facilites are superb. It truly deserves the 5-star rating it has, I would highly recommend a stay here, even if you're not actually golfing !!

The course facilities are also excellent, although unfortunately the clubhouse wasn't finished during our stay, it does look very impressive and will be a great addition when completed. It also commands an impressive view of the 18th, adding a little pressure on the final hole in the future !!

The course itself is superbly conditioned, with a surprising little par-3 second giving you an early test, although a good tee shot will set you up nicely. The third is certainly a feature hole, with the tee box set in trees directly faced by a pond, bushes and a steep climb that immediately doglegs sharply to the left making accuracy paramount. The following few holes are all relatively easy if you are an accurate player, but going left, right or long into the greens can punish you severly as a number of the fairways are blind drives or second shots due to inclines and doglegs, with heavy woods and some long rough waiting for you. The 15th was our favourite, a short first shot is followed by a steep drop down into a dell that is almost completely surrounded by trees, requiring a good slice of guts to hit the green in two. The final three holes are relatively straightforward, but again any inaccuracy on your longer shots can be devastating (spot the man who got stung more than once).

This course is not necessarily going to benefit purely the power players, and in fact is a great leveller between the long hitters and the control players. In fairness, some of the greens can be quite messy with leaves etc at this time of year but that just adds a little to the challenge. The fairways are also thick with them in some places, but nevertheless this course is by far the best I've played. Even with the need to play quite strategic golf in places I managed to shoot my lowest score to date, and matched players who normally beat me comfortably due to the power of their shots as the course can eat a long, lazily aimed drive a lot quicker than a carefully played iron shot.

I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a weekend stay away, especially at this time of year where the deal that we got was amazing value for money. We paid £180 for two nights Dinner, Bed & Breakfast at the hotel, with 3 rounds of golf into the bargain !!!"

Rich Asquith, 29th October 2007