Wentworth Club — West Course

The West Course at Wentworth — the famous 'Burma Road' — is one of the most recognisable courses in the game: the long-time home of the DP World Tour's flagship BMW PGA Championship and the headquarters of the European Tour and Ryder Cup Europe. Harry Colt, one of the great architects of the age, cut it through the pine, birch and heather of the wooded Surrey hills at Virginia Water, and it opened in 1926 as the second of his two Wentworth courses after the East.

Few places are so woven into the fabric of the game. It was an informal Great Britain v United States match at Wentworth in 1926 that helped inspire the St Albans seed merchant Samuel Ryder to put up his little gold cup, and the club went on to host the official Ryder Cup in 1953. For more than four decades it was also home to the World Match Play Championship (1964–2007), a made-for-television autumn classic where Gary Player won five times and Seve Ballesteros lit up the Surrey pines. The 'Burma Road' nickname was earned the hard way — a long, punishing haul of a course that members reckoned as gruelling as the wartime road it was named for.

A tree-lined, undulating par 72 of some 7,240 yards, the West has been extensively remodelled by Ernie Els, Wentworth's champion-in-residence: a major reshaping in 2010, then further green work in 2016–17 that laid a SubAir system beneath every green — the first of its kind in England — for fast, firm, year-round tournament conditioning. The par-5 18th, climbing to the clubhouse, remains one of the most familiar finishing holes in European golf.

It is, first and foremost, a private members' and tournament club, so visitor access is limited — but for the golfer who can arrange a game, a round on the Burma Road is a genuine bucket-list day.