Shortlands

Shortlands Golf Club sits in the suburban reaches of Bromley, in the London Borough of Bromley, where the Kent countryside begins its gradual assertion over the city's sprawl. The area has a quietly prosperous, residential character — tree-lined streets, Victorian and Edwardian architecture — and the club feels very much at home in that setting, a private members' retreat that has served its local community for well over a century.

A par 65 tells you something important before you even arrive: this is a course built for the land available, not the land a designer might have wished for. Short holes dominate, and the premium is on precision, course management, and the short game rather than raw power. That dynamic tends to produce genuinely competitive club golf — handicaps are honest, and scoring well requires real control rather than just a functioning driver.

For visitors, Shortlands offers a very particular kind of English club golf: unhurried, sociable, rooted in its community, and uninterested in impressing anyone on paper. The pleasure is in playing it.