There can’t be too many fans of golf or the 007 film franchise who aren’t familiar with this now iconic scene from the film Goldfinger, which saw our fearless hero, James Bond, played by Sean Connery,
playing against all-round baddie Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) in a high-stakes game at Stoke Poges Golf Club, as it was called then.
Although the match starts out at ‘a shilling a hole;, Bond raises the stakes significantly when he drops a gold bar on the green ‘to make things interesting’.
Goldfinger resorts to some underhand – and slight-of-hand – tactics in order to try and win the match, but Bond, and his faithful caddie are wise to caddie Oddjob’s dropping of a replacement ball down his trouser leg.
Having previously found his opponent’s ball in the rough, but rather unsportingly not declared his discovery, Bond goes on to win the match with the classic line “You play a Slazenger 1, don’t you? Well, this a Slazenger 7.”
Cue Goldfinger stomping off the 18th green where later Oddjob would be seen crushing the ball with his bare hands- outside the clubhouse.
Connery himself was something of a latecomer to golf, only taking up the game in his 30s. The demands of the Goldfinger script resulted in the Scot taking a course of lessons to fine-tune his swing so that he could film the golf scenes himself rather than have to rely of some judicious editing with a stunt double golf pro.
Filmed in 1964, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the release of Goldfinger, which went on to become a box office smash, recouping the costs of production in just two weeks and grossing over $120m in cinema ticket sales alone.
Of course, all fans of Ian Fleming’s books know that the golf course on which the match took place was a thinly disguised version of Royal St George’s Golf Club in Kent (called St Mark’s in the book) where Fleming was a lifelong member and due to be Captain of the club before his death, but it is Stoke Park that has quite understandably entered Bond folklore and attracted so much attention from fans over the last 60 years.
Stoke Park was chosen to stage the golf scene partly because of its proximity to the Pinewood Studios in nearby Slough, where Goldfinger’s indoor scenes were shot, but also because of its impressive Palladian mansion house, which also served as the clubhouse at the time.
Stoke Park has not been shy about trading on its links to the film, hosting numerous Bond-themed golf tournaments and events over the years celebrating its connection to one of the world’s most popular film franchises.
Since Stoke Park was sold into private hands in 2021, the golf club shut and the clubhouse reverted into a family home, although a new clubhouse is currently at the planning stages and 18 holes of the Harry Colt designed course re-opened just last month for pay-and-play visitors and corporate golf days and events, allowing golf fans and Bond aficionados to once again walk in the footsteps of film and sporting history.
