Fairwood Park Golf Club

Fairwood Park was laid out in 1969 by the Hawtree practice, on Fairwood Common at the neck of the Gower peninsula west of Swansea. The site had been RAF Fairwood Common, a wartime fighter airfield, which is why the ground is flatter and more open than most of Gower and why the course could be built long from the start.

It has since been used for Welsh championship golf, which few courses of its age in the region can claim, and it remains the longest and most serious test on the peninsula.

What it asks of you

Eighteen holes over 6,644 yards, tree-lined in its later stretches and exposed in its earlier ones. Sources differ on the par, so check the card at the clubhouse rather than trusting a directory.

The length is genuine and the wind off the Bristol Channel is the variable. On a still day it is a fair test of driving; on a westerly the outward holes become a different course entirely. Straight driving is the premium, and the bunkering is heavy enough that the ball played from the wrong side of a fairway rarely reaches the green.

The greens are the club’s strongest asset and are kept quicker and truer than a course at this price level would normally manage.

What players say about it

The course is open to visitors 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

• Conditioning draws consistently strong marks, and the greens in particular are described as fast, true and sometimes simply perfect.
• Value is the second theme and it is emphatic. Reviewers routinely call it the best value on Gower.
• The welcome from staff and members is mentioned in a large share of accounts, which matters for a visitor arriving alone.
• The course is described as difficult but friendly, which is the balance a club needs to keep both societies and good players happy.

What comes up against

• The ground is flat and open by Gower standards, and visitors who came for the peninsula’s scenery find the setting ordinary.
• Exposure to the wind on the outward holes makes a bad-weather round hard work, and the length compounds it.
• Straight driving is genuinely required, and players who spray the ball find the tree lines and bunkering unforgiving.
• The airfield origins show. This is a functional site rather than a natural one, and it looks it in places.

Getting there and when to go

Fairwood Common is ten minutes west of Swansea on the road onto Gower, with Cardiff airport around an hour away and Swansea on the main line from London Paddington. Pennard and Langland Bay, both far more dramatic and far shorter, are twenty minutes further on, and the three make a good weekend together.

The course plays all year. Late spring and early autumn give the best weather and the firmest turf. Green fees and society bookings are 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 airfield history and the design, 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.