The Swans Have Landed, and Golf Should Be Taking Notes

We've been hearing about Mad Swans for weeks now. Quietly at first, then not so quietly, the kind of word of mouth that usually means a brand's actually doing something right rather than just marketing well. So we've had a proper look, and we like what we see enough that we're getting ourselves booked in. Full review to follow. For now, here's why we think it matters.

Somewhere in the Mendip Hills there is now a golf course you can play in jeans, finish in under two hours, and leave without anyone having checked your handicap, your dress code compliance, or your right to be there. It's called Mad Swans, it's twelve holes, and it's annoyingly good.

The people behind it know what they're doing. Joel Cadbury and Ollie Vigors, the duo behind Beaverbrook, built this one. The course was reworked by Mackenzie & Ebert, the firm whose names sit behind Royal Portrush, Royal St George's and Turnberry, and who advise on most of the Open Championship rota, so this isn't twelve holes knocked together because eighteen felt like a lot of effort. Michelin-starred chef Ollie Dabbous is on board too, as creative director and investor rather than the man actually behind the pass, which is a strange amount of talent to throw at what is essentially a very nice place to hit a ball about. But we'll reserve judgement until we've actually chowed down.

The twelve-hole format isn't a gimmick dreamed up by someone who got bored at hole nine. St Andrews itself was originally twelve holes, the first Open Championship in 1860 was played over twelve, and it's an idea Jack Nicklaus has been quietly campaigning for since long before Mad Swans came along, with Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods making similar noises since. Mad Swans has essentially worked out what most clubs haven't: the thing keeping people off the course is rarely the course. It's the five hours, the tee sheet anxiety, and the lingering sense that you need to have earned your place there. Cut the round in half and remove the dress code, and you're left with the bit people actually wanted, which is a good walk, decent company, and somewhere to have a drink afterwards that isn't a car park.

We've made the case in this column before that golf's relationship with rules has tipped from tradition into self-parody. Whether white is "a golf colour." Whether trainers are an outrage. Whether a man in a polo shirt three buttons down is bringing the game into disrepute. Mad Swans has built an entire site on the position that none of that matters, and done it with enough pedigree behind it that nobody can accuse it of dumbing anything down. That's the clever part. It's not anti-golf. It's pro-golf, minus the gatekeeping.

This is, for us, where the movement is in the sport right now. We're still fans of the traditionalist round, the regular four, the clubhouse rules that have stood for a century. But golf has always evolved when it's needed to, and other sports got there first. Tennis has padel. Cricket has The Hundred. Golf has been slower to work out its own version of that, and Mad Swans might be it. A whole new audience who'd never have booked a tee time suddenly has a reason to. We're fans.

It would have been easy to get this wrong. "Fun golf" has a long, embarrassing history of meaning crazy golf with a bar attached. What keeps Mad Swans on the right side of that line is that nothing here reads as a compromise. The course is properly reworked, not bulldozed and rebuilt as a novelty. The food is properly good. The casualness is the entire point, not an excuse for cutting corners.

None of this means the traditional round is finished. Royal Portrush isn't going anywhere, and a five-hour Saturday with the regular four still has its place. But Mad Swans is a useful reminder that golf doesn't need quite so much ceremony to still be golf. The Mendips site is open now, with South Downs to follow. Go before the rest of the trade press finishes writing it up.

The round starts in the wardrobe. At Mad Swans, the wardrobe is just a blank canvas.

We'll be there ourselves before long. Stay tuned for the full verdict.