The golf club that moved, lock, stock and bar

OF ALL the golf clubs on the Fylde Coast which have made the greatest strides in recent years, especially in improvements to their courses, few would deny that Green Drive has been outstanding.

Swampland which once disfigured the centre of the course has been drained and incorporated into new or extended holes. Ponds and burns which have become homes for wildfowl have been excavated and thousands of trees have been planted in avenues between the fairways and round the tees.

Like Fairhaven, Lytham Green Drive is a parkland course and those who go there to try to qualify for the Open will find it in total contrast to Royal Lytham where the championship itself will be decided.

Lytham Green Drive came into being 61 years ago and though the course was laid out originally by the late, great Sandy Herd, its subsequent development was carried out by Tim Steer. Steer was professional at the old Blackpool Golf Club which closed at the start of the Second World War to make way for extensions to the runway at Squires Gate Airport. He literally "moved" to Green Drive with the Blackpool club's clubhouse.

When the Blackpool club closed, Green Drive acquired its wooden clubhouse and moved it, lock, stock and bar, down to Lytham where for years it formed the centrepiece of the Green Drive headquarters. The old wooden structure has long since disappeared but those who recall it will remember it as having a remarkably friendly and hospitable atmosphere despite its lack of elbow room.

Steer was responsible for the construction of several plateau-type greens at Green Drive, largely to overcome the flooding to which the course was subjected but which by the clever construction of drainage ditches has almost been eliminated.

It was the fourth of the four courses to be chosen for the qualifying rounds for the Open and while it is, on the card, the simplest of the four; it presents a great many problems. Not the least of these is the need for straightness, for the woods which surround the course and the trees which have been planted on it will penalise a player who tends to stray. The small greens call for accurate approach work and though the course is not severely bunkered its traps are cleverly laid.

It is a far cry from the days when sheep grazed on the course to help to keep the grass down to the- well manicured layout of today, with its splendid flower beds in front of the clubhouse.

Though Green Drive does not seek national competitions, it has for many years been noted for its annual junior championship which is one of the most popular in the North. Its field rarely fails to include boys who go on to become internationals, one of the most noted of whom is Nigel Sumner, who won not only the junior championship, but also the Green Drive Trophy. Sumner went on to become a boy and youth international and to play for Lancashire, and only recently he announced that he was to become a professional.

Miss Ann Irvin, one of Britain’s greatest women golfers, has been a member there for several years.

Green Drive, like all the courses in Lytham St Annes, stands on land which once belonged to Squire Clifton before he sold out to Guardian Royal Exchange, and though for a year or so now there has been a rumour that one day the club may lose its 17th and 18th holes (bordering Ballam-road) to the builder, it remains a rumour.

Anyway, if things did come to that a plan envisaged many years ago by the then club president Mr William Pickles might be put into being. Mr Pickles wanted to extend the course onto land bordering the third hole to give the club, as he put it, "more elbow room."

The land is still there and if Green Drive ever did have to move over a bit, the club can be guaranteed to make as good a job out of its new acres as it has out of its present ones.