t1399828538

some friends and I decided to play this course on August bank holiday Monday as our own course was out of action due to a function we weren't involved in. I was looking forward to playing thornbury again as we hadn't played there for a couple of years and thought it would be a nice change. how wrong could we be !!
firstly the welcome from the pro shop on arrival was less than friendly to say the least, the guy serving us was sullen and didn't seem very welcoming at all. whether this was because we were non members or not I don't know but it wasn't a great start ! to make matters worse they couldn't even supply us with proper score cards, they were just flimsy pieces of paper with the score card photocopied onto it ! he put it down to problems with their suppliers which seemed a bit of a poor excuse to be honest. I then made my way to the restaurant area to order a bacon and sausage roll and coffee to take out onto the course. the young lady serving was very friendly and the food arrived fairly quickly which was a good plus point. the food was nice if a little on the expensive side (over £8 for a roll and coffee !) but the coffee was very poor. I didn't drink it until out on the course so had no chance to return it, it was supposed to be a cappuccino but was just a cup of frothy hot milk containing no coffee ! maybe they had a faulty machine so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. anyway, food, drink and service issues aside we were there to play golf and enjoy our round so we headed out onto the course. thought we should get a few practice putts in beforehand so the putting green was calling, if you can call it that ! rutted, drag marks, covered in sand, totally unusable. "don't worry" I said to the lads, "the greens on the course won't be like this" . wrong again ! every green from 1 to 18 was basically a lottery when putting. you had to massively over hit every putt just to get it close then it would veer off line as soon as it hit a drag Mark. also there was more sand on the greens than in the bunkers which were also unplayable by the way, rock hard underneath with a thin sprinkling of sand on top. fairways were very patchy with hundreds of pitch marks left unrepaired. I know I've waffled on a bit here and given thornbury bit of a character assassination but I can't believe a course could be in this bad condition in the height of summer when we have had perfect weather for maintenance. aside from the poor service and unfriendly welcome, which we've encountered there before by the way, we were still willing to give it a go as it's more about the golf than anything else. I've never written an online review about anything before but felt compelled to comment on this as I think thornbury really need to up their game and treat the paying customers with a bit more respect. an all round bad experience and a disappointing end to the bank holiday weekend. oh well, work tomorrow !