Old Course

Few courses carry a name as unassuming as "Old Course" and yet earn it so completely. Ferndown Golf Club's original layout has been a fixture of Dorset golf since the early 20th century, and its mature heathland character — heather, pines, and silver birch framing tight fairways — gives it the quiet authority that only decades of play can produce. The club has long been regarded as one of the better heathland venues in southern England, the kind of place serious golfers make a point of seeking out.

Ferndown sits just north of Bournemouth, where the sandy, free-draining soils of the Dorset heathlands create playing conditions that hold up well through winter and reward precision over power. The landscape here is genuinely distinctive: this same heathland terrain shaped courses across the Hampshire and Dorset border country, and Ferndown wears it as naturally as any of them.

A par of 71 hints at a course that asks for accurate ball-striking rather than raw length — heathland golf at its most honest.