Theale Golf Club

Friendly course to play at. Staff are welcoming. Main difficulty from the course is the tree that block wayward shots. Sand for the bunkers could do with being replaced.

I live down the road from this course so it's a shame that it isn't better. Put simply the owners don't invest enough in maintenance to keep it playable throughout the year and the £27 "any time" weekend green fee is completely uncompetitive compared to other courses in the area.

To be fair, it's not an uninteresting course. Set in a woodland area it has plenty of trees, some of the holes tending on the narrow side. When you add in the deep rough and tricky approach shots i'd suggest that it would give most golfers a challenge. However for high handicappers this layout borders on the unfair - I lose more balls here then anywhere else.

Ironically the poor value leads to Theale's best quality - the fact that it's usually quiet. It's the one place you can turn up at 9am on a Saturday without a tee time and expect to go out without too much delay. And then when on the course you're unlikely to run into much traffic. Perfect for an after work 18 holes when the light is against you.

If you're struggling for somewhere to play during the busy summer months, can hit reasonably straight and want to enjoy a club house afterwards (Theale's club house is decent and it's staff are friendly) then maybe give Theale a go. Otherwise pick from one of the many much better course.

I've played in and around Reading and Theale. There are better courses for both quality of course and price. This course shouldn't be over £15 for what greens they have. 11th hole has a green under repair that makes the hole unplayable. 7th hole has a tee off stil under repair since the beginning of summer.

Our round was spoilt by a 3-balls in front of us who were very slow and wouldn't let us play through. I guess we had a choice of being beliigerent and teeing off onto their heads or just letting them behave as they did. We opted to have at least 1 courteous party in our midst but our round was spoilt by waiting on them to finish their re-tees and ball searching through each hole.

I wouldn't recommend it to a seasoned golfer but if you're beginner, you wouldn't know there's better quality out there. As for the price, that is overpriced

by a country mile.

On the plus side, there's always a friendly assistant in th golf shop. Very helpful, very cheerful and I'm sure if we had a way of telling them about the slow coaches ahead of us, they may have helped. But there was no way to do so.