Golf in London

Hangar Hill Park has a 9 hole Pitch and Putt course owned by Ealing Borough Council. The park is tucked away from the noise of the North Circular in one of those mock tudor enclaves of Ealing, where impossibly huge black and white mansions hide hundreds of flats inside them like Russian Dolls and Japanese tenants tease wild boar with fire crackers in their back gardens.

Hangar Hill Park Pitch and Putt 
Hillcrest Road
Ealing
London W5

Google map

‘£4:50 for 9 holes, + an extra £2 if you want to go round again. Clubs, balls, tees, scorecards and pencils available; also cold drinks, chocolate. £120 will buy you unlimited golf for a whole year’  (thanks to NickP - see comments below - for this info on prices and an annual ticket).

It’s an unpromising area for golf. Just south of where the North Circular slaps the back of the A40 on its way to Oxford. The Hangar Lane Gyratory. A place specifically created for radio traffic bulletins. Where BBC war correspondents record the carnage and hone their skills before jetting off to the Middle East. The Circular is the overlooked mini-me child of  the M25, passed over for promotion, festering and bitter. Just another also ran A-road. Hemmed in and dragged down by house upon dreary house of crumbling mock Tudor. The only signs of occupancy are Le Mans style concrete driveways, and bronze lions adorning the iron railings. Ducking and diving under junctions covered with shopping arcades that might once have been grand but are now reduced to long distance telephone calls, pound shops, and takeaways. A bypass to avoid London traffic congestion that has become a bypass of life. Where time has stood still since the 60s leaving only a single long access road to IKEA.

But doesn’t Hangar Hill sound like a place with a past? Where punishment might have once been meted out to witches and tramps and thieves. Where not doffing your cap might have ended with a severed spinal cord. Well no, it isn’t. In middle English it’s ‘wooded hill’, so you see…right there then. Obvious really.

If it weren’t for the cars on the A406, then surely the tumbleweed would have taken a hold by now. Gradually building up centrifugal force on the Circular, collecting crisp packets and dog ends like a snowball before being flung westwards to crush Slough. The road already has the look of an ailing prospector’s town. Boarded-up doors and broken windows. The last survivors: desperate men fighting over a decaying Nissan Bluebird and women pushing prams like they’re wards of The Ark on wheels.

It’s difficult to imagine people going about the business of living there. Enjoying a bbq on their front lawn, sipping a Pimms, hands on hips - masters of all they survey, dodging the six lanes of puking traffic to retrieve an overzealous croquet ball.

I shouldn’t mock. What we’re seeing here is a Blueprint for a Better Britain. Why strain to understand all these regional accents anyway? What we need is one long democratic town stretching the length and breadth of the country, down the Tunnel and out into continental Europe. Where everyone speaks a hybrid of Polish Mockney,

‘Alright cock, ows yer Borscht?’

Where no-one wants for nuthin and everyone lives on the roadside within 10 minutes of a B&Q, an IKEA, and a Tesco. Climbing in their armoured 4×4 to go on violent incursions to huge shopping malls with names like Blue Sky and Crystal Water and Verdant Meadow. Conveyed by escalator between interior fields to graze on designer labels and suck the plasma from television sets. Every house built entirely of glass on its own mini-roundabout. Children happily playing among the speed bumps and traffic cones, and urban foxes hunting the bus lanes to pick off the elderly. It’s inevitable.

For now it’s just a dull trunk road that’s only of interest because it’s home to a bit of golf -Ilford Golf Club and Cranfield Golf Academy Golf Range in the East, Hangar Hill Park and Gunnersbury Park to the West. And our exit is the Hangar Lane Gyratory for Hangar Hill Park Pitch and Putt. In my view the undisputed King of Pitch and Putt. Never mind Pay and Play. Play and be awed.

But first, let’s dwell a little longer on our surroundings. Isn’t there something nostalgic about public parks like this? They belong to another age, only visible to us in old postcards, Turkish Baths, pump houses, and here in the crevices between suburbs. The green oases, where tiny people with moon faces made of soot and bodies only held together with cotton and consumption went to wash off the filth whilst the brass band played…tiddly om pom pom.

Where the past taps its bony finger on your shoulder as you pull on the oar of your rowboat. Where your vision crackles and pops at the edges and the colour drains from view as you peep over the hedge to watch the pure white pensioners gently guide their bowls around the lawn, like the shepherds of lost souls.

That’s the view from the cheap seats anyway. The benches of the red-nosed dispossessed. Watching the world pass by in jerky time-lapse photography. Blurred by the plastic lens of the bottom of a 2 litre Diamond White.

Where would we be without the pitch and putt, the bowling green and the boating lake? In a field empty but for a herd of confused canines that’s where. Hounds with distended bladders, careering around into trees and signs, frantically trying to mark their territory on every landmark in 5 square miles. Humping everything and everybody in between.

But how will we ever make new ones? Will anyone ever have the money and grand vision again? Are there any estates left to bequeath to the public that haven’t already been filled with the hot tubs and projection screens of footballers and pop stars? Where will we get our fix of parklife? Where will we eat our fish and chips?

And you’re back in the room.

Relax, don’t adjust your sets. The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. It’s only golf on Golf in London. With your host - the londongolfer…

Well we’ve got some lovely fairways down here, just look at that undulating parkland. Breathe it in son. Mmmm mmm. It’s a beauty.

As you can see, I’m still struggling with the whole reviewing thing. Here we go though -

This 9 hole pitch and putt course is laid out over a hillside at one corner of the park, with fine views over north London and the Wembley Stadium, which looks great at night, but pictured here looks like dental floss draped over a toilet bowl.

The first is steep uphill to a tiny green you can’t see from the tee. As you can see the mats aren’t up to much and the teeing area has been hacked away by enthusiastic wedges. You can’t go to far wrong if you miss as there’s plenty of room behind the green, but it’s not an easy target. The greens are far from great. Very patchy, small, and your ball could pop up and bounce away in any direction. But that’s part of the fun.

The second is the plainest hole on the course. It’s the only flat one, but at around 140 yards it’s a real stretch for your wedge. An easy 9 might be a better option and make this hole very simple.

The third is steeply downhill to a green protected by a ditch to the front and roughly shaped humps to the back. The ground falls away to the left and the green is so shallow that a couple of bounces and your though. A nervous pull could result in a lost ball here.

Here’s what waits for your tee shot on the third. A lucky bounce before the ditch and you could be close. Otherwise its the aerial route and home you don’t hit a hump and bounce away.

The fourth is blind uphill played over trees to a tiny sloping green. Easy! Hangar Hill doesn’t mess about. It’s pitch and putt and crazy golf rolled into one. This green is particularly vicious. The tee is place just right to clear these trees, but you’ve got to peer under them or around them to find your line in.

The fifth is steeply downhill to a green with a ditch and trees behind it. The ground slopes fairly steeply away to the left, so playing a short one out to the right ought to bring it bouncing and rolling onto the green.

A view of the fifth green from the sixth tee.

The sixth is very short, blind and steeply uphill. Not and easy one to judge. Thin it and you’ll be shouting ‘Can I have my ball back’ to the neighbours.

The seventh you could almost putt. It’s downhill all the way, this time on a very severe slope that takes your ball away and to the right. Tricky one to judge this, but the green is bigger than most on this course. The bushes lie behind the green to catch any thinned shots.

The eighth is the toughest hole on the course. A reasonably long pitch over a dip to a raised green. Difficult to judge and harder to find the green.

The ninth is relatively benign finishing hole. Downhill to one of the better greens. You can pitch down to the right hand edge to get a kindly bounce down to the left and onto the putting surface.

I played this course when I returned to golf after a long absence and it gets my juices going. I’m not good enough to play it well, but even if I were, I would probably not score so well. It’s not very fair you see. As pitch and putt land, it’s perfect. There’s barely a flat lie to be had, even on the tees. There’s trees and ditches, hills and hollows. But no bunkers. It’s pure pitch and putt pleasure from beginning to end.

In comparison with like courses (municipal pitch and putts in public parks) I’m fairly certain this is the best. Certainly the best I’ve played so far in London. Give it a ago and support your local park.

Scorecard to come later…it must be hiding under a banana skin somewhere in my bag.