A compact county with one genuine heavyweight
Bracknell Forest doesn't have many golf clubs — seven in total — but what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in quality at the top end. The county sits in the South East, spread across Ascot, Crowthorne and Wokingham, and its course mix leans heavily towards parkland, with four of the seven clubs falling into that category and one, The Berkshire, standing apart as a heathland course of real substance.
That heathland course is the reason golfers travel from well outside the county to play here. The Berkshire Golf Club in Ascot was laid out in 1928 by Herbert Fowler, the same architect responsible for Walton Heath and Cruden Bay, and it occupies genuine Crown Estate heathland — heather, pine, streams and the natural movement of the ground doing most of the design work. The club runs two full 18-hole layouts, Red and Blue, and both are ranked among the top 100 courses in the country, which is a rare thing for a club to be able to say about either course, let alone both. The Berkshire also carries competitive weight beyond its own members, hosting The Berkshire Trophy and The Astor Salver each year.
Parkland golf around Wokingham and Ascot
Away from the heather, the county's golf settles into mature parkland, mostly around Wokingham. The Downshire Golf Club sits on the edge of Bracknell in woodland once used for hunting by King Henry VIII, and it plays as a proper championship test with water in play on a good number of holes — the par-3 7th is the hole members and visitors talk about most. Nearby, Easthampstead Golf Club and Easthampstead Ladies Golf Club give Wokingham two further 18-hole parkland options, rounding out a stretch of golf that's more about tree-lined fairways and settled routing than dramatic terrain.
Ascot also has a parkland pedigree beyond The Berkshire. Maidenhead Golf Club was founded in 1896 by a group of senior Brigade of Guards and naval officers, with W H Grenfell — later Lord Desborough — installed as its first president; the Grenfell Cup he lent his name to is still contested annually. The club has since relocated to a new site at Mill Ride, but the rolling parkland character and tree-lined fairways that shaped its original identity have carried across. Forest Artisans Golf Club is the county's other Ascot listing, adding to the town's density of golf alongside its racecourse fame.
Crowthorne and the rest of the county
Crowthorne's contribution is Wellington College Golf Club, a smaller-scale presence that fills out the spread of clubs across the county's three golfing towns. Taken together, Bracknell Forest isn't a county you'd visit for variety of terrain — heathland aside, it's parkland throughout — but the standard is consistently sound, and the presence of a Fowler heathland course of The Berkshire's calibre gives the county a genuine centrepiece.
For a club golfer planning a day or two here, the sensible approach is to build a visit around The Berkshire and use the surrounding parkland clubs — Downshire for its historic ground and water-strewn back nine, the Easthampstead courses for straightforward Wokingham golf, Maidenhead for its Mill Ride setting and long-standing traditions — to fill out the rest of the trip. It's a small county on paper, but it punches well above its size.