This Is The Best £55 You Will EVER Spend On Playing Golf!

It's important to start this article by saying that I really don't like the term 'hidden gem', but a) there really isn't anything better - fellow golf course enthusiasts Rob Smith, Jezz Ellwood and I debated this at length a few years ago, so trust us in this - and b) when a great course is nestled away in the glorious unspoilt Peak District and it's not that widely known about, then it's a fairly accurate description!

Anyway, I digress. I've had Cavendish (acknowledged as one of the very best courses in Derbyshire) on my hit list for over 10 years thanks to the relentless championing of it by a good friend and golf course architect Jonathan Gaunt.

Jonathan first played Cavendish in the late 1990s, drawn to the course because of its Alister MacKenzie credentials. He’d learned to play golf as a youngster on other courses MacKenzie had designed in Yorkshire including Alwoodley, Bingley St Ives, Cobble Hall (Leeds) GC, Fulford, Headingley, Harrogate GC, Ilkley and Moortown.

A few years later he joined the club. In 2014, Jonathan’s company was asked to prepare a masterplan for course improvements. The latest version (of which there have been a number of iterations) was finalised in 2019, and it is this plan that the Centenary Project is based upon.

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2025 - the year of the Club’s centenary. The work involves specialist advice on drainage works, bunker remodelling and tee reconstruction. The bunker remodelling work is undertaken by a specialist shaper – Martin Crompton – who has worked on numerous other MacKenzie courses, under Gaunt's supervision, with the essential support of the greenkeeping team, headed by Warwick Manning. 

The bunker remodelling work aims to deliver a sympathetic update, respectful of MacKenzie’s design style, aiming towards future-proofing the course for members and visitors for another 100 years. Gaunt and Manning have been able to reference some black and white photographs taken soon after the course opened for play in 1927 to help guide their work.

The work will take an already brilliant course to the next level and mark a new exciting chapter in a long and interesting story that has seen the club’s fortunes fluctuate wildly in its near 100-year history.

A short history of Cavendish GC

The course at Cavendish was originally designed in 1925 by Alister MacKenzie, employed by the Duke of Devonshire (living at Chatsworth House, where the Club’s archives are still kept), and started out as a place to play for the good and the great of Buxton and well to do folk visiting the town to take in the health giving benefits of the spa water.

Although considered short by modern standards, the course features some dramatically contoured greens and well-placed strategic bunkering. Many natural features have been brought into play in MacKenzie’s clever design, including deep ravines and valleys, fast flowing streams and wide, undulating fairway landing areas. The course has stood the test of time, still providing a strong challenge for golfers of all levels. It is a fore-runner, in MacKenzie’s portfolio, to his design of Augusta National.

Gaunt told me, “I soon realised that Cavendish was one of the most authentic examples of MacKenzie’s work I’d seen or played, having not been fiddled around with too much by previous secretaries, captains and presidents.”

And, following his visit in 1994, Tom Doak lavished praise on the course - including it within both his top 10 list of "best courses of par less than 70" and "most artistic routings". He goes on to say, “Its par of 68 punches well above its class”.

At one point the club had 78 members - 39 female and 39 male, true equality before equality mattered, and for a long time no tradespeople were members, except the local butcher! 

Cavendish nearly went out of business during Covid but was pulled back from the brink by crowdfunding from the wider golf community, who all chipped in, and the generosity of several significant donors. 

There is a real community feel at Cavendish and I was fortunate to play with one of the club’s most celebrated members, Eddie Birchenough. Eddie was head professional at Royal Lytham for many years but he grew up in a house behind the 3rd tee and learned his trade on the course. He and Lee Marshall, who is head pro and club manager, proved to be the perfect guides.

Playing The Course

The course kicks off with three fairly friendly par 4s that head out away from the clubhouse back towards it and then out again. Each has very interesting approaches and green sites. I was slightly perplexed by a few comments on Twitter from people who had played that suggested they were ‘weak’ holes.

Each to their own but I thought they were very interesting, playable holes that did a great job of getting you ready for the golfing test and visual delights that would unfold. In my view, they’re an example of great design and typical of MacKenzie’s philosophy that didn't seem to needlessly punish the ordinary golfer.

I'd taken plenty of pictures and notes on my phone by the time we reached the 4th but things ramped up from here as hole after hole provided either a great photo opportunity or a noteworthy design feature to jot down.

The comparisons with Augusta come thick and fast with so many distinctive MacKenzie design features in front of you that will seem familiar to anyone who has watched the Masters on TV. It's hard to pick one favourite hole (even if I was to split the first and second nine) but here are my favourite par 3, 4 and 5 (NB there's only one of the latter but it's sensational). For story telling reasons, I'll cover them in sequence. Yardages are from the white medal tees.

Par 4 - 5th hole - 420 yards

Having just played the excellent par-3 4th, you walk up to the 5th tee (from where you can see players hitting approaches to and putting out at the nearby 16th). It's at this point the views get very good indeed but the tee shot demands real focus. A ditch that runs up the length of the right encourages you to play left towards a ‘safer side’ that features some trees and uneven ground.

Take a bold line and you'll be rewarded. I bailed out and although a decent strike I ended up having to nudge one out from behind a tree, into the rough where, yes, you guessed it, I had an uneven lie. A semi fat 7-wood later I had 90 yards left in. I then knifed a wedge into the thick rough bank behind the green! After extracting myself from the bank, I had a ‘few’ putts on a green with some interesting breaks and borrows. In short, a great hole, played badly!

There's a huge bonus to this hole. After you've played it you walk up a slope and get to look back down the hole and are confronted with an incredible vista of the course and the Derbyshire countryside. 

Views and pictures back down a hole are underrated in my view. It gives you a physical (and importantly for me) mental retrospective that helps crystallise the qualities of the hole you've just tackled.

Par 5 - 14th - 496 yards

Having played a few holes where you don't get far reaching views, the vistas open up again at the 14th. It's the only par 5 on the course under 500 yards and it’s reachable for big hitters in favourable conditions, but for most players it's best to come into the classic false-fronted MacKenzie green (think the 9th at Augusta) with some loft and control.

Eddie and Lee told me the tee shot is easier than it was. High winds in winter of 2022 took down a huge beech tree on the corner of the dog leg that forced players to hit either a big cut or a draw to find the middle of the fairway. Even without the tree it's still a tough tee shot as there's a low stone wall all the way down the left hand side, over which you're OB.

From the fairway you have a small target to aim at (rightly so on a shortish par 5) and the false front means you need to club correctly or else you'll roll back and have a very tricky shot back to the flag.

Par 3 - 15th - 116 yards

You exit the 14th green to the left and take a path up to the tee box that's shared by the back tee of the 6th and the 15th. The views are once again stunning. With the modest yardage even from the back tee you're immediately feeling like this is a birdie chance. Indeed, Eddie and Lee told me there have been a lot of aces here as the green feeds down to the right where the flag is often located. Like the previous hole there's a false front... that I managed to putt off, having misjudged the line across the green. I was reassured to hear that's not uncommon!

As you play up 18, which is a truly stunning finishing hole, you are greeted with a sight of what members refer to as ‘the best beer garden in Buxton’ - the lovely clubhouse terrace. It has great views of the course and hills beyond and on fine days gets the sun throughout the day. As I sat with Lee and Eddie after the round enjoying a drink, I couldn’t think of many spots in the world of golf that could match this.

You could spend 10 times the green fee charged here (winter rates start at £40, rising to £55 in the summer for a weekday and £65 at the weekend) and and not have your game tested, or your joy for the game heightened, as you do by visiting Cavendish.

This is REAL golf. So, if like me, you love discovering new golf courses and finding somewhere new to put a smile on your face, then get planning your own trip to Cavendish. Just don't leave it 10 years to do it!

The Journey To Cavendish

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My car for the trip was the Genesis G70 saloon and it proved a great choice to tackle the combination of extended motorway miles for the first section of the journey and the twists and turns of the A roads for the last hour through the Peak District.

On the motorways, adaptive cruise control and hi-tech safety features like lane assist help you stay in effortless control; then, on A roads, the Sport and Sport+ settings. The great response on offer and the handling made that last hour really fun.

I've now driven the majority of the excellent Genesis range. I took a G70 Shooting Brake to the wiggly back lanes of Devon for a golf tour, drove world champion boxer Tony Bellew around Liverpool in the GV70 and went up and back to Scotland with three pals in a GV80. It's a toss up between the G70 and GV70 as to my favourite. 

The boot space on the G70 was surprisingly large, accommodating my clubs easily with an electric trolley and two mid-sized pieces of luggage. 

The interior of all the Genesis cars have been really luxurious and stylish. My G70 had a really sporty tech feel, with black Nappa leather with red stitching contrasting with the brushed aluminium of the centre console and trims. The exterior was equally stunning, with the matte finish ‘Bond Silver’ proving very eye-catching. The G70 really was a complete all-rounder.