- Foxhills Club & Resort is spending £3 million on new irrigation for its Longcross and Bernard Hunt championship courses.
- More than 3,500 new heads will be installed, more than doubling the current count of around 1,800.
- On-course works begin in October 2027 and will be phased across two winters.
Foxhills Club & Resort has committed £3 million to replacing the irrigation infrastructure across both of its championship courses, the latest phase of a spending programme that has already reshaped the Surrey venue’s golf over the past three years.
The multi-year project will put more than 3,500 new heads into the ground on Longcross and Bernard Hunt, against roughly 1,800 at present. Pumps, reservoirs and water storage are all being upgraded alongside, with the resort expecting irrigation efficiency to improve by around 20%, cycle times to shorten and rainwater harvesting capacity to rise significantly across its 400-acre estate.
Director of Golf Sean Graham described it as the most significant investment the club has made in its courses.
Why the plumbing matters
Rather than watering broad swathes of turf, the new system lets the greenkeeping team put water where it is needed, which the club says will deal with dry and bare patches while improving conditions around the greens and through the semi-rough.
“We needed to be able to target irrigation exactly where it is needed,” said Derrick Johnstone, Golf Course & Estates Manager, who has chosen Rain Bird as the technology partner, using its CirrusPRO control software and IC System integrated control technology.
“Importantly, this is not simply about keeping the courses green,” Graham said. “It is about using water intelligently, making better use of what we can harvest and ensuring we are managing the estate responsibly while continuing to deliver the quality of playing conditions our members and guests expect.”
That argument has been building across the game for years. When GolfToday put the question of golf’s biggest threats to a panel of industry leaders, the USGA’s Rand Jerris was blunt:
“We happen to think that water is going to be the biggest obstacle to the long-term health of the game.” In the same discussion, The R&A’s Steve Isaac singled out “the lack of long-term planning at most golf facilities” as a short-term concern, with drought and extreme weather the long-term one.
High-precision irrigation is increasingly part of how premium venues sell themselves, too. In Portugal, the Els Club Vilamoura made its modernised system, fed by treated wastewater, a centrepiece of the sustainability credentials that won it an award last year.
What it means for golfers
Members and visitors will not notice much for a while. The first phase starts off-course this winter, with renovations to the reservoir and complete rebuilds of the pump stations and tanks.
The courses themselves will stay untouched until October 2027, after which the installation will be phased across two winters with only one or two holes affected at any one time. Much of the pipework will go in using a mole plough, which avoids the need for major trenching and should spare the playing surfaces the scarring that usually comes with an irrigation overhaul.
The work is being delivered by Irritech and MJ Abbott, the latter a long-standing Foxhills partner.
Protecting the Longcross renovation
In 2023 the resort launched a five-year modernisation masterplan, by which point £2 million had gone into both courses, the academy and new greenkeeping equipment.
The Longcross renovation that followed in 2023-24, designed by European Golf Design, reworked bunkering, greens, drainage, irrigation, tee positions and strategy, and turned the 16th into a signature par three. Bernard Hunt received significant drainage work in 2025.
Longcross has a tournament pedigree worth protecting. It hosted the Asian Tour-sanctioned International Series England in 2024, and Foxhills staged the PGA Cup in 2017 and 2022. The resort, which opened in 1975, also has the nine-hole, par-three Manor Course and a TrackMan-equipped, floodlit range, and sits less than an hour from London and 20 minutes from Heathrow.
“We have invested significantly in the golf product over recent years and this project is another important step in preparing Foxhills for the next generation of golfers,” Graham said.
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Simon Bale
Simon Bale is the publisher of Golf Today. A low single-figure handicap golfer, he was previously a major shareholder and course reviewer for Top100GolfCourses.com for over a decade, starting in 2010. Through this role, he developed extensive knowledge of golf course design and architecture while playing more than 300 courses worldwide.