BACK TO THE BELFRY: The former spud farm gets a fourth shot at respect

Golf Digest, Sept, 2001 by John Barton

To marry once is a duty, twice a folly, thrice a madness. This proverb, dating back to those innocent, pre-Liz Taylor days, could also be applied to holding Ryder Cups at The Belfry. And yet, this September, the venerable clash of the continents will be conducted over the much-maligned former potato fields for a record fourth time.

The Belfry had a rotten start in life. To begin with, the land, which had proved so good for growing spuds, was less than ideal for golf. It was unremittingly flat, and the soil was a thick, red clay--sodden in winter, bone dry in summer. (The best linksland, by contrast, is sand-based with towering dunes and endless slopes.)

In 1979, two years after the course opened, it was the site of a PGA European Tour event sponsored by cheap Russian car maker Lada. The fairways were so sparse and littered with stones that competitors could lift, clean and place--within two club-lengths. One player walked off the course in disgust--and was fined. Plans to hold the 1981 Ryder Cup at The Belfry were scrapped.

With any new venture, it's always better to under-promise and over-deliver. If you do the opposite, only ridicule will ensue (witness the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, England). The mud--or the clay--would stick to The Belfry for years. Some of it still does. A year ago, however, a revamped version was reopened by avid golfer Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, following a year-long, [pound]2.4 million (almost $3.5 million) redevelopment that barely left a single hole untouched. The Belfry had a miserable childhood. Now that it's well into adulthood, almost a quarter of a century old, it's a good time to take another look. Is The Belfry now great? Or what?

The English heartland

The Belfry is in the county of Warwickshire, in a part of England called the Midlands, which like the American Midwest is a shapeless geographic blob whose defining feature is that it is nowhere near the sea. This is Britain's industrial heartland, and its epicenter is the gritty city of Birmingham, England's second-largest metropolis. Like all industrial cities, Birmingham, which is just 10 miles from The Belfry, has always relied heavily on transportation--it is said to have more canals than Venice (it would be unwise, however, to change your honeymoon plans). Today it is a crossroads, where all the country's major highways converge. Indeed, the city's most famous landmark is a snarl of concrete freeways affectionately known as Spaghetti Junction. Say what you like about Birmingham, but it's really great for getting someplace else. All roads lead to Rome; all roads lead away from Birmingham.

There are plenty of points of interest in this part of the world. Nearby is Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of Shakespeare, where coachloads of tourists come in search of Bard mousepads; Coventry, flattened by German bombs in November 1940; Warwick Castle, with its glorious Capability Brown gardens (Brown was to landscape gardening in the 18th century what Tom Fazio is to golf course architecture today). And, of course, The Belfry.

The grounds that The Belfry occupies had been a significant estate, called Moxhull Manor, since medieval times. Entrepreneur Jimmy Byrnes bought it from a poultry farmer in an auction in 1959. He built a clocktower atop the central part of the old Moxhull Hall the following year, opened it as a hotel and, tossing aside a thousand years of history, renamed it "The Belfry."

On a visit in April, the hotel--"To avoid any confusion," says a press release, "please note that in all references to this year's Ryder Cup venue, the correct name to use is The De Vere Belfry"--was a hive of activity. England was emerging from a winter of discontent: mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth horrors, a rail crisis, a fuel crisis, a health-service crisis. Plus it was the wettest winter on record (no small achievement, this being England). But at The Belfry it was business as usual. The European tour's Benson & Hedges tournament was two weeks away. Something called the European Communications Users Summit was in full swing, and signs in the lobby welcomed delegates for a host of conferences presented by the likes of Peugeot, Oracle and the Road Haulage Association. There was even a meeting headlined: "Postman Pat: The Way Forward."

The redesign of The Belfry's Brabazon Course (named after past British PGA president Lord Brabazon) was undertaken by Dave Thomas, who was the original co-architect along with Peter Alliss. Thomas is a gentle giant of a Welshman, who lost a playoff for the 1958 British Open to Peter Thomson and finished a shot behind Jack Nicklaus' winning total in 1966.

Shoring up the front nine

"I always felt we had a pretty good back nine," says Thomas, who played in four Ryder Cups. "But the front nine didn't have the same level of excitement. So the main goal was to make the front more visual and challenging."

The most dramatic change was made to the third and fourth holes, which used to be rather ordinary--a par 4 and a par 5 running side by side. Thomas created a huge pond between them, and repositioned the third green to a place just beyond the pond, to the right of where the fourth tee used to be. This creates a dramatic, dogleg-left par 5 of 538 yards. Ryder Cuppers hoping to get on in two will face a long shot over water to a shallow, kidney bean-shape green that's also protected by a cavernous, steep-faced bunker.