Moortown Golf Club

The changing face of Moortown’s 9th - by Head Professional Martin Heggie

This is a dogleg right that plays as the longest of the par 4s from any of the men’s tees, is a par 5 for the ladies and is a fitting climax to the front nine. Off the tips it measures 473 yards and there were a few high numbers in the British Boys here in 2024.

Off the yellows some of the bigger hitters will be able to carry the ditch which can make it a very different hole but most of us will need to hit driver and then a mid to long iron/hyrbid.

There is a fork tree down the left-hand side which looks like three cricket stumps and I will aim at the middle stump and try and peel one off there. If you lay back too far then you will leave yourself a shot in of 200-plus yards which makes it such a tough hole.

My favourite addition since I’ve been here is the bunker that’s 100 and odd yards short on the right-hand side which adds plenty to the visual appeal. It used to look like a large expanse of rough down the right and this has given it good definition to the shape of the hole.

If you can get your tee shot away the approach should be pretty appealing. Your eye will be drawn to the greenside bunker to the right of the green but there is plenty of room and you’ll notice from the photos the angle of the green which might not be apparent when playing the hole and which can make for a great back right pin position.

We have now reinstated a sandy scrape between the 10th and 12th holes and the bunker to the rear of the 9th green has also been tweaked, adding a little weight to the right side, while maintaining three bays and two fingers. This has reintroduced MacKenzie’s original backdrop of the 9th hole, visually feeding into the restored sandy scrape.

Going back years now this hole used to have a very strange lot of pruned bushes off the tee which took some manicuring before thankfully being taken out and a bunker was put in down the left-hand side to protect the 8th tee a little bit which adds to the look and shape of the hole.

Programme for the 1984 Car Care and an 11th victory for Sir Nick Faldo, now an honorary member of the club.

If you want an idea of how different the European Tour calendar looked in 1984 then the Car Care Plan International was just the fifth event of the season.
Of the side who wrestled back the Ryder Cup the following year at The Belfry, after a 28-year wait, only Seve Ballesteros would be missing, instead choosing to play on the PGA Tour.

Faldo had won for the first time in the States three weeks before, when he landed the Heritage Classic, and he would defend his title here having won the previous year at Sand Moor.

The Englishman was two behind with four holes to play before he overhauled a leaderboard that included Howard Clark, Jose Rivero, Brian Waites, Sandy Lyle, Des Smyth and Ken Brown.

Faldo shot rounds of 69-70-66-71 to beat Clark by one and Rivero by two.

The final threeball was a stellar one consisting of Faldo, Clark and Lyle and the numbers were so great that the sponsors had to issue an announcement that no more people join the gallery watching the final group.

Clark, struggling with a bad back, would double-bogey the 15th to let Faldo back in and the future six-time major winner would hit a 9-iron to three feet at the 17th hole while Clark would miss from a similar distance for par.

The most important lesson Faldo learnt from his recent Stateside venture was to ‘stay patient and not try to force things’.

“Obviously I am delighted to have come back from California, cope with vastly different conditions and win. You have to just keep plodding along and hang in there and it all came together in the last four holes for me. It means that I’ve won on both sides of the Atlantic in the last month. Now I would like to successfully defend the French Open next week.”

Faldo would finish third behind Langer in Paris.

For local hope Clark it was the second successive year that he was thwarted by Faldo though he did chip in from 30 yards at the 72nd hole to beat Rivero and his £11,000 second prize kept him at the top of the Order of Merit.

Paul Hoad received a cheque for £5,000 for the first pro to hole his second shot at the 18th.

This year promises to be a special year with the hosting of the Brabazon Trophy.

And there are plenty of opportunities for you to play Moortown through our 2026 Open Days....

Seniors AMAM – Monday April 27
- Teams of 4, can be made up of any combination of men and women, ie 4 men, 4 women, 3 men and 1 women etc. Entrants must be 55 or over on the day of play.

Mixed Open – Monday May 4
- 4BBB Stableford. Pairs to be made up of 1 man and 1 women. Entry fee includes lunch.

Yorkshire AMAM Series – May 13-15
- Men’s three-day event played across three of Yorkshire’s finest – Moortown, Alwoodley & Fulford.

Seniors Open – Monday June 22
- Men’s 4BBB Stableford, Entrants must be 55 years or over on the day of play.

4BBB Open – Thursday August 20
- 4BBB Stableford, pairs can be made up of any combination of men and women, ie 2 men, 2 women, 1 man and 1 woman.

Moortown Junior Open – Friday August 21
- Open to U18 Boys & Girls, entrants must be under 18 on the day of play.

Yorkshire Challenge – September 9-11
- Three-day event played across Yorkshire for Ryder Cup venues – Moortown, Ganton & Lindrick – supported by Titleist and FootJoy.

MacKenzie Classic – October 1-2
- Men’s AMAM Team two-day event, played at Alwoodley & Moortown, the first two Alistair MacKenzie-designed courses.

1957 Brabazon Trophy, Moortown

In the 11th year of the Brabazon Trophy, and the first to be played at Moortown, Doug Sewell won the title by eight shots. The Hook Heath player beat Tony Slark into second place and he would go on to make the first of two Walker Cup appearances later that year. Two years later at Muirfield a rookie by the name of Jack Nicklaus would appear in the American ranks.

The following year Sewell won the English Amateur at Walton Heath and he would win a second Brabazon Trophy two years later, after beating Michael Bonallack in a play-off. The same year he and Bonallack would win the Sunningdale Foursomes together.

As a pro Sewell succeeded Percy Alliss at Ferndown where he would be for 27 years. In that time he won the Martini International at Conwy when he tied with five-time Open champion Peter Thomson and the duo would share the prize money.

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Two of golf’s true greats..

Designer Dr Alister MacKenzie and the US captain Walter Hagen at the 1929 Ryder Cup at Moortown

Two weeks later Hagen would win his third Claret Jug at Muirfield, with his local Moortown caddy Ernest Hargreaves on his bag

Shortly after MacKenzie would begin his design of Augusta National

(Photo: Simon Haines)

The last time that Moortown hosted the Brabazon Trophy proved to be one of the most memorable weekends in Irish golf.

In May 2009 Shane Lowry captured the Irish Open at County Louth while still an amateur. The future Open champion beat Robert Rock at the third hole of a sudden-death play-off to become just the third amateur to win on the European Tour.

Over in Yorkshire his Ireland team-mate Niall Kearney landed the Brabazon Trophy, strolling to a five-shot victory in the rain-shortened event.

Kearney, a then 20-year-old former Irish Boys champion from Royal Dublin and part of Ireland’s victorious European Amateur team with Lowry, finished on a total of 208 with England’s Liam Burns from Sundridge Park in second and Welsh international Joe Vickery a further stroke back in third.

Kearney would go on to make the Walker Cup side later that year at Merion where he would come up against Rickie Fowler in the foursomes.

Ronan Rafferty was the last previous Irishman to lift the title when he shared the trophy with amateur legend Peter McEvoy at Hunstanton in 1980.

Moortown’s locker room has changed little over the years

If you look closely you’ll spot ones belonging to the 1929 Ryder Cup captains and our iconic designer