Ilkeston - Autumn On The Golf Course
w/e 12 November 2006
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

As part of the Sport Erewash project, a new clubhouse has been built on the town's municipal Pewit Golf Course adjacent to the Rutland Recreation Ground. The site now goes by the name Rutland Sports Park but the golf course has still retained its original name. From the new clubhouse the first hole is a fairly straightforward downhill shot with a view towards West Hallam in the distance.

The mild weather seems to have delayed autumn this year but now that we are into November the leaves are at last beginning to turn and the colours certainly enhance the course. Seen here through the trees from just off the first green are two tees. The golf course consists of nine holes and the left hand tee of the two is the ninth. The other tee is for the second hole (right) which can be quite disconcerting for the novice golfer as any shot to the left will end up out of bounds. The third hole returns players to the clubhouse from where they have to walk across the car park to continue their round.

Holes four to eight inclusive are separated from the first three and the ninth by a number of allotment gardens and the tee for the fourth hole is now near the old clubhouse seen here on the left. The fifth hole where the tee has a downward lie (right) plays in a similar direction to the fourth but crosses a valley. The difficulty of these two holes is not helped by the fact, especially in these cloudless conditions, that the golfers are playing almost directly towards the sun. The course is described as "A short municipal meadowland course" and has a par of just 60 for two rounds of the nine holes with a yardage of 4072.

Elsewhere I have seen Pewit Golf Course described as "challenging and mature" as is evidenced here by the trees and the long shadows in this view towards the sixth green in the bottom corner of the course. Some criticism has also been levelled at the "weed strewn bunkers with compacted sand" typical of many municipal courses but whilst I was capturing these images the fairways were being mown and the greens looked good too.

The small trees at the front of the eighth green provide a natural hazard and the footpath on the left with the allotment gardens beyond delineate another out of bounds.

To reach the ninth tee (and the second that we saw earlier) from the eighth hole a path leads between the allotments on the right and the Nutbrook Trail on the left. Plans to extend the course to a full eighteen holes appear to be on hold and may even have been cancelled altogether but Pewit is open seven days a week and is very reasonably priced. Although it will never see a major championship and it is highly unlikely that a well known professional* will ever grace its fairways, all in all, it is an accessible, attractive amenity for the amateur golfer and even if like me, you don't play, you can still enjoy the location. *Since preparing this page I have had an email from John Carter in which he says "As a pupil of the Ilkeston Grammar School in the mid 60's, we had the great Dai Rees for a one day workshop and after he had demonstrated a lot of techniques, we all went across the railway line (oops, did I say that?) to the golf course where he demonstrated his ability to hit every green off the tee." I stand corrected - thanks John.

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