Redbourn Golf Club — Round Recap

Redbourn Golf Club — Round Recap

22nd May 2026 | Ver Course | 90 Shots | 30 Stableford Points

By Jabunong — Golf Passport UK

Some rounds you plan for weeks. This wasn’t one of them.

It was a Friday morning, my playing partner Mutsa was in South Africa. I had taken some time off work — my birthday falls the following Monday and I’ve made it a personal rule for years now: I celebrate on a golf course. Not with a cake. Not with a dinner reservation. On a course, with a club in my hand.

With Mutsa unavailable I had a choice. Go or don’t go. I chose to go.

I didn’t even call ahead. I just drove to Redbourn Golf Club — a place I know as well as anywhere on earth — with no tee time booked, no playing partner confirmed, and the backup plan of driving on to Stockwood Park if nothing was available. Redbourn or Stockwood. The two courses that defined the first chapter of my golf life.

As it turned out, I didn’t need the backup plan.

Arriving at Redbourn — A Club Investing in Itself

I’ve played over 200 rounds at Redbourn Golf Club. Two memberships — the first from around 2010 to 2013, the second from Covid through to the end of 2023. I know every hole, every slope, every way the course can hurt you. But pulling through the gates on Friday morning, the first thing I noticed was the logo. New. Modernised. Sharp.

The club is putting money in. You can feel it.

The pro shop has always been one of the better ones in Hertfordshire — a proper selection of clothing, equipment and shoes, with genuine discounts on selected products rather than the token markdowns you get at some clubs. That hasn’t changed, and if anything it felt better stocked than I remembered.

The restaurant is spacious, well-run and serves food worth eating. There’s an outside terrace that overlooks the 18th green on one side and out across the course on the other. On a Friday morning in May with the sun coming through, it was exactly the kind of place you want to be sitting after 18 holes.

But the first thing that genuinely stopped me was the putting green. Immaculate. Properly immaculate — smooth, true, and rolling exactly the way a good putting green should. I spent nearly 30 minutes on it before I’d even thought about warming up anywhere else. That time on the putting green would pay dividends later.

The Warm-Up — Range Work and Two Nets

The driving range is being extended — work in progress — which has temporarily affected the chipping area. There are two driving nets behind the practice putting green where you can hit with your own ball, no charge, no booking required. They’re well-positioned and genuinely useful for a warm-up.

I hit my driver in the nets. It felt solid. It felt like it was working.

Reader, it was not working.

I also spent time on the chipping area — which despite the range works has a green with multiple terrains, a back bunker for bunker practice, and enough variety to get your short game sharp before the round. For a club mid-renovation, the practice facilities are still more than adequate.

On the First Tee — Matt and Choi from America

No tee time, no playing partner, no problem. I walked into the pro shop, asked if there was a group I could join, and was pointed toward Matt and his wife Choi — visiting from America, out for a round at a Hertfordshire parkland course on a Friday afternoon, genuinely lovely people.

This is one of the things I love most about golf. You can walk onto a course alone, get paired with complete strangers, and spend four hours in good company without anything feeling forced. Golf connects people in a way most sports don’t. I’ve made genuine, lasting friendships on golf courses — starting with a man named Gabriel, who I met on the 4th green at Redbourn back in 2011. He was finishing a shot. I was starting my round. We got talking, played together that day, and spent the next few years playing courses across Hertfordshire together — regional match play included, where we actually did very well. I’m still in touch with Gabriel now. That friendship started because I wasn’t afraid to say hello to a stranger on a golf course.

Matt and Choi were excellent company for the round. Good players, good fun, and exactly the kind of playing partners that make a solo, unplanned Friday round feel like it was meant to be.

The Front Nine — The Driver Lies in Wait

I started conservatively. 3-wood off the first tee, found the left rough, pitched to the green, two putts. Bogey. Fine start — Kinsbourne View is a hole that punishes over-aggression at the tee with a large tree blocking the approach if you end up right, and I played it correctly.

Hole 2 — Farmer’s Field, the par 5 — was the round’s early highlight. Hit toward the two tall trees that mark the line on this U-shaped dogleg left, set myself up perfectly, flushed a 5-wood to the left edge of the green, chip and two putts. Par.That’s the kind of hole that makes you think the round is going to be one of those days.

And then I made the mistake that would define the entire round.

I took out the driver.

Hole 3: sliced it into the trees right. Hole 4: double bogey. Hole 5: another bogey. Hole 6 — Ver Valley, stroke index 2 — was where the damage became irreparable. Driver again. Huge slice. Lost ball in the rough. Recovery attempt. Lost another ball. I didn’t even finish the hole properly. Gave myself the triple bogey and moved on. You know when a hole has beaten you. That was hole 6.

Hole 7 — Reedy Burn, the par 3 at 154 yards — brought me back. 7-iron onto the green, chip, single putt. Par. A reminder that the short game was working even when the driver wasn’t.

Front nine: 45 shots. The par 5 parred. The par 3s causing more damage than the par 4s. And the M6 driver in the bag like a hand grenade waiting to go off.

The Back Nine — Leave the Driver Alone

At the turn I made myself a promise. Driver stays in the bag.

Long Climb — hole 10, stroke index 1, uphill all the way — I hit 3-wood. Sliced it anyway, recovered well with a 5-wood, overshot the green, chipped, two putts. Double bogey 6. You take that on a stroke index 1 uphill par 4 and move on.

Bluebell Wood — hole 12, a long par 4 with a slight dogleg — I broke the promise. Driver came out. The ball hit a post on the way out of bounds and bounced back onto the fairway. I’ll take the luck. Par was there but I missed the final putt coming back. Bogey 5.

The back nine was steadier golf overall — three bogeys, two double bogeys, two pars on the par 3s — with one genuinely satisfying moment on the 16th.

Ver Crossing — hole 16, the par 3 at 151 yards. This is the hole where I made my hole-in-one back in 2012. Every time I stand on that tee I think about it. 2-iron onto the green, two putts, par. No hole-in-one this time. But I’ll take par on a hole that carries that kind of memory.

The 18th — Homeward Bound, 608 yards, par 5 — tempted me one last time. The driver came out. Sliced it into the rough. Found the ball, chipped out, put the third shot by the green, chipped on, two putts. Bogey 6. At least I finished.

Back nine: 45 shots.

The Verdict — 90 Shots, 30 Stableford Points


Total shots	90
Stableford points	30
Nett score	75
Playing handicap	15
Green fee	£45 (visitor, 1pm tee time)

90 shots on a course I’ve played 200+ times is not a disaster — it’s honest. The handicap is 14 and the score reflects a round where one club caused the majority of the damage. Remove the driver from my bag on holes 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 18 — replace every one of those tee shots with a 3-wood — and this is an 82 or 83. Possibly better.

That is the lesson from this round, written here so I can’t ignore it: the M6 driver and I need more time on the range before it comes back out on a live round.

Everything else — the course conditions, the pace of play, the short game, the putting — was good. The putting green warm-up paid off. The par 3s were largely fine. The approach play was decent.

It was the driver. It was always the driver.

And the course itself? Still one of the best £45 you can spend on a Friday afternoon in Hertfordshire. Conditions were excellent — fairways green and firm, greens true and well-paced, rough playable but not punishing unless you were in it with a lost ball. The club is investing, the staff are welcoming, and Redbourn remains the course that feels most like home.

Full course review coming. If you want to know exactly what to expect hole by hole at Redbourn, that’ll be the one to read.

Jabunong — Golf Passport UK Game 2 of 2026 · Redbourn Golf Club · 22nd May · Still working on that driver.

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