In short
- Course
- Heaton Park, North Manchester (par 70, 5,744 yards)
- Taken on
- 2020, by Heaton Park Golf C.I.C.
- Land
- Parkland and moorland hybrid
- Lesson
- Each course is its own project
Heaton Park Golf C.I.C. took on Heaton Park in 2020, the year after Marland. It is a par 70 of 5,744 yards in the middle of the park in North Manchester.
Marland had gone from the brink of closure to a course that looked like a championship layout within months, and Andrew Terry thought he had a formula. He applied it at Heaton Park.
What went wrong
Marland is parkland. Heaton Park is a hybrid of parkland and moorland. In his Substack, Andrew says the Marland playbook left Heaton Park "wearing somebody else's clothes".
The lesson he took from it is that a course should be allowed to be what the land says it is. The job is to bring out what is already there, not to turn every course into a copy of one you admire.
How we start now
Every course is treated as its own project. The work begins with the course architecture, then walking the land in all weathers, a survey of the grasses and a map of the drainage. A programme comes after that, not before.
Where a course has features by a known architect, they are protected, and bunkers are rebuilt in the architect's style. Sometimes trees come out. Drainage and disease prevention are treated as capital items, not as running costs, because a wetter climate makes them the difference between playing in January and not.
Heaton Park today
The course has a pitch and putt for families, a clubhouse that stays open after the golf, and free coaching for children from our PGA professionals. See the Heaton Park page for tee times and the Annual Pass.