Golf in London

There are around 100 golf clubs in the boroughs of Greater London:

The Addington golf club
Addington Court golf centre
Addington Palace golf club
Airlinks golf club
Aquarius golf club
Arkley golf club
Barnehurst golf club
Bexleyheath golf club
Brent Valley golf club
Bromley golf club
Bush Hill golf club
Central London golf centre
Chelsfield Lakes golf club
Cherry Lodge golf club
Chessington golf centre
Chislehurst golf club
Coombe Hill golf club
Coombe Wood golf club
Coulsdon Court golf club
Crews Hill golf club
Croham Hurst golf club
Crowlands Heath golf club
Cuddington golf club
Dulwich and Sydenham golf club
Ealing golf club
Eltham Warren golf club
Enfield golf club
Fairlop Waters golf club
Finchley golf club
Fulwell golf club
Grim’s Dyke golf club
Hadley Wood golf club
Hainault Forest golf club
Hampstead golf club
Hampton Court Palace golf club
Haste Hill golf club
Hendon golf club
High Elms golf club
Highgate golf club
Hillingdon golf club
Horsendon Hill golf club
Hounslow Heath golf course
Ilford golf club
Langley Park golf club
Lee Valley golf course
Lime Trees golf course
London Scottish golf club
Maylands golf and country club
Malden golf club
Mill Hill golf club
Mitcham golf club
Muswell Hill golf club
North Middlesex golf club
Northolt golf course
Northwood golf club
Perivale Park golf course
PlayGolf at Northwick Park
Old Ford Manor golf club
Orpington golf centre
Pinner Hill golf club
Purley Downs golf club
The Richmond golf club
Richmond Park golf courses
Risebridge golf club
Roehampton club
Romford golf club
Royal Blackheath golf club
Royal Mid-Surrey golf club
Royal Wimbledon golf club
Ruislip golf course
The Shire
Shirley Park golf club
Shooters Hill golf club
Sidcup golf club
South Herts golf club
Stanmore golf club
Stockley park golf course
Strawberry Hill golf club
Sudbury golf club
Sundridge Park golf club
Thamesview golf club
Top Meadow golf club and hotel
The Oaks Sports Centre
Tudor Park golf club
Upminster golf club
Uxbridge public golf course
Wanstead golf club
West Essex golf club
West Kent golf club
West Middlesex golf club
Whitewebbs Park golf course
Wimbledon Park golf club
Wimbledon Common golf club
Woodcote Park golf club
Woodford golf club
Wyke Green golf club

You can find details of each club and its location using the Google map.

But what is this area? Is it really London?  

Greater London, Great Britain, Greater Manchester, Great Yarmouth. It’s the title you give yourself when you’ve just annexed your neighbour. Greater than thou. Bigger and better. London’s getting laararrrrger!

“Greater London” is  really an adminstrator’s invention. A focus group of a name. But away from the flipping of bureaucratic charts, definitions of London are as changeble as the sculptures on Trafalgar Square . Just try asking an estate agent. Their rubbery notions of “London borders” are fluffy at best and at worst, only by reigned in by the presence of the French. Or ask a taxi driver as he measures you up for a fare. Or a green belt commuter as he defends his driving. You’ll get a different answer every time. 

And they’re not the only ones. Everyone has their own idea where it is. Like Gordon Brown and his moral compass, everyone carries their own map of imaginary London. 

You can get to know your own London onions by interpreting the signs you see every day. Symbols and expressions of London reveal themselves in the unlikeliest of places. Just don’t be shy about looking around you. Have a good old poke around London’s nooks and cop a sneaky feel of her crannies. You’ll soon find them.

There they are -  carved into the remnants of old town walls, repeated by congestion charge warnings, and whispered in the rushing wind from tube tunnels. You can see it in the channels your TV tunes in to, you can feel it as you punch in the the 0207 digits on your phone, and you can pass it on as you boast about your post code.

The patina of its past still here, in old Middlesex addresses and the City street signs that speak of rural markets and redundant trades. You can still see the sinews of its industrial strength stretched taut in subterranean rivers and canal networks, and its muscles flex on the skyline with the silhouettes of disused chimneys and rusting gasometers.

Squeezed into the blue corset of the M25, causing unsightly love-handles around the retail parks of its Circular. Its worldy image projected in polished portland stone by day, flickers with a scarlet neon seediness as its reflected the thousands of passing car windows by night. One block sheltering the homeless in the serenity of its Plane trees and garden squares, whilst the next flashes its cash and labels on Nash terraces, west London stucco, and docklands high rise.  

The rhythm of its language preserved in parsley liquor,  cracked and worn with booze from leathery clubs and gin palaces, its hidden pleasures waiting beyond ropes and bouncers, the echoes of its songs and laughter bounce from the facades of music halls and cinemas.

Stretching its metropolitan and northern roots out into the unsuspecting towns of the Green Belt, bringing them out in a rash of binge drinking, hoodies, and mobile phone theft. Sending out ragged convoys of bright red buses in all directions. Laying claim to everyone in their path, calling to them with the mournfull chime of its Bow bells.

Best of all, when you’ve passed your Knowledge, you can just about make it up as you go along. It’s as small as you are rich or as big as you’re poor.

I’m talking about Greater London. That loose brotherhood of boroughs most Londoners don’t recognise outside of their council tax bills. They don’t know their Havering from their Hillingdon and don’t care to either. There’s so many of these councils. They ooze out from under the Thames and scramble up its banks, digging their claws in the yielding grassy flanks of the home counties. Which is just as well. Because inner London boroughs have no truck with fairways. They’ve got their credibility to think of. Their streets are mean and they’re staying mean. Golf is too spacially indulgent, too bourgeois, to be welcomed by the town planner. He’s got people to house, mini-roundabouts not greens are his bag. Speed bumps are his undulation of choice. Chicanes, not dog-legs are his modus operandi. If he’s having any golf its got to be stacked multi-storey, with underfloor heating, renewable greens, and triple glazing.

Sure, they’ve got indoor golf in the City. Suits rule the world. They can have everything they want. Golf on simulators. Why not? Speed Cricket? Random Rugby? Frantic Football? Bring it on. Just so long as it’s quick and absurdly expensive. Sport wrapped up in a press release, stuffed in a headline, pan fried, plated up, and gobbled down with a nice Chianti. 

So where are the real golf holes hidden? In the greenest city in the world you mean? They’re everywhere. The chalky London Basin is lined with the bent grass of fairways and punctured by thousands of flagsticks. Many in unpromising spots that have been bought up on the cheap. Old hunting grounds are a good place to start. Or common land where no-one can be bothered to exercise their grazing rights any more. Or heathland where dodgy soil, tangly heather, and pine needles put everyone else off. On the site of a disused airfield, or trying to make a landfill pretty. At the end of commuter lines and the far reaches of the tube, trying to tempt Londoners out to live in the sticks. Tucked into the sweaty crux of a busy motorway junction, under the roar of a busy flight path, or propped up against the edge of  woodland.

Whatever you want, there’s a course for you. London must surely be the golfing capital of the World. There can’t be anywhere to touch it for quality and quantity of golf courses. The love affair between golf and the capital has been going steady for over 100 years. Whilst we’ve lost our glamorous rooftop golf courses at Whiteleys and Adelaide House, and the great political, professional and amateur patrons the game have long departed, it still shows signs of life in Seve’s new courses and PlayGolf at Northwick Park.