Aspley Guise & Woburn Sands Golf Club

The club was formed in 1914 with nine holes on the greensand ridge between Aspley Guise and Woburn Sands, and stayed at nine for sixty years: the second nine opened in 1974. That long half-life shows in the course, where the older holes are tighter and more old-fashioned than the newer ones and the two halves have quite different characters.

The ground is the same sand and heather that made the neighbouring Woburn courses famous, a few miles away. This is the modest club on that soil rather than the celebrated one, and the difference in green fee is considerable.

What it asks of you

Par 71 over about 6,100 yards, so length is not the examination. Accuracy is.

The corridors are cut through heather, birch and pine, the ground rolls enough to leave awkward stances, and the ball that misses the fairway is usually found and rarely advanced. Narrow is the word most visitors use, and it is not a complaint so much as a description of the strategy: the tee shot has to be placed, and the driver stays in the bag on several holes.

The sand under the turf is the practical advantage. This is a course that plays firm in summer and stays open through a wet winter when the clay courses of north Buckinghamshire are shut, and that alone makes it worth knowing about.

What players say about it

Visitors and societies play by arrangement and the review record is healthy. The notes below summarise recurring themes across specialist golf sites, traveller review pages and player discussion threads. They are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course. We report what comes back repeatedly rather than isolated remarks, and we do not name or quote individual reviewers.

What comes up in its favour

• Greens and tees are consistently well rated, and the course is described as a fair test for players across a range of handicaps.
• The setting is repeatedly called peaceful, and several accounts single out particular holes as the equal of anything nearby.
• The staff and the welcome come up often, with visitors mentioning advice offered before the round.
• Value is strong for the soil and the location, particularly measured against the famous neighbours on the same ridge.

What comes up against

• Fairways suffer in a dry summer. Reviewers report tight lies and patchy turf after a long hot spell, with the semi-rough sometimes an easier lie than the fairway.
• The narrowness frustrates longer hitters, who find themselves playing irons off most tees.
• The two nines do not read as one course, which is the inevitable consequence of building them sixty years apart.
• At around 6,100 yards it will not stretch a strong player.

Getting there and when to go

The club is between Aspley Guise and Woburn Sands on the edge of Milton Keynes, ten minutes from junction 13 of the M1 and around an hour from Heathrow, with Aspley Guise station a short walk away and Milton Keynes Central on the main line from London Euston.

The course plays all year and the sand drains well, which makes it a genuine winter option. Late spring, when the heather is coming on, and early autumn are the best of it. Visitor and society booking is by arrangement.

Green fees

Rates and visitor tee times are handled by the club and vary by day and season. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location, Wikipedia and published coverage for the club’s history and the 1974 extension, and the club’s own site for access and booking. The opinion section summarises public reviews and player discussions read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we do not reproduce or attribute quotes.

We have not played this course, and nothing here is a substitute for that. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say in what it says. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.