Oxfordshire's golf is built on parkland, and plenty of it. Of the 29 clubs across the county, fifteen are classed as parkland, spread from the Cotswold edge at Chipping Norton and Burford down through Oxford itself to the Thames-side towns of Henley and Reading. It's a county where tree-lined fairways and gentle undulation are the norm rather than the exception, but the heathland pockets around Banbury and the handful of links-style layouts give the golfing traveller more variety than the raw numbers might suggest.
Oxford is the obvious place to start, if only for the history. Oxford Golf Club dates to 1873, making it the oldest club in the county and one of the oldest in England; James Braid laid out the original course before Harry Colt reworked it in 1922, and the 143-acre site two miles from the city centre still carries muntjac deer and red kites through its wildlife list. A short drive away, Studley Wood packs 14 lakes and 44 acres of ancient woodland into its 177 acres, while Hinksey Heights, despite its links classification, offers something rarer still in this landscape: views back across the city's spires from an inland course.
Heathland Golf Around Banbury and Henley
The three heathland courses are where Oxfordshire's golf gets most interesting. Huntercombe, near Henley-on-Thames, is the only course Willie Park Jnr designed in this style anywhere, opened in 1901 and ranked 55th in England by Golf World; it stays fairly flat except for the second and third, and its defences run to 13 sand bunkers backed up by more than 100 grass ones. Frilford Heath, in Abingdon since 1908, splits its identity between JH Taylor's Red Course and Simon Gidman's Blue, and has hosted Open Championship Regional Qualifying and English Amateur events alongside European Tour qualifying since 2011. Further north at Tadmarton Heath, the sandy soil sits at 650 feet, the greens run small, the gorse is unforgiving, and the fairways turn hard and fast in summer — enough to earn it a place in Golf World's Top 100 under £65.
Parkland From the Cotswolds to the Thames
Most of the county's golf, though, is gentler than that. Burford, founded in 1936 to a J.H. Turner design, sits on Cotswold ground with drainage good enough to stay playable through winter, and runs a Blue Tee course specifically for juniors. Cotswolds Club at Chipping Norton climbs above 700 feet with tree-lined, undulating fairways that locals rate among the best in the county. Down at Abingdon, Drayton Park is a Hawtree design on flat ground threaded by Ginge Brook and four lakes, while Hadden Hill near Didcot opened in two stages either side of 1990 and 1991, with over 30 miles of underground drainage laid before a ball was struck and individual drainage built into every bunker. Kirtlington, up at Kidlington, offers 27 holes and a curious mix of the traditional and the eccentric — Hebridean sheep keep the rough in check, and the course carries a Muirfield-style island bunker on the 16th and an Alister MacKenzie-style two-tier green on the 17th.
Championship Layouts and Where to Play
For golfers wanting a taste of tournament golf, The Oxfordshire at Thame is the headline name: a Rees Jones links-style design in the Chilterns that has hosted the Benson & Hedges International and the Andersen Consulting World Championship, defended by 135 bunkers. The Caversham in Reading, redesigned by Tom McBroom as his first UK project, offers eight different course layouts to USGA standards. Waterstock, east of Oxford in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, was laid out by Donald Steel, who also worked on St Andrews' Jubilee and Eden courses, and its dogleg par-5s at the 4th and 10th are worth the visit alone. With green fees starting from around £20, and courses spread from Swindon and Banbury to Henley and Reading, there's little need to travel far in Oxfordshire to find a genuinely different round from the one before it.