One of European golf’s true giants, the world-famous St Mellion Estate – home to the first Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course in the UK – is celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2026 with a series of events including golf tournaments, commemorative graphics and a special 50th Anniversary membership.
A new logo is visible throughout the Estate during this significant year in St Mellion’s history. The pins on the Nicklaus Signature Course and the Kernow Course – both of them past hosts to multiple European Tour events – already proudly fly special 50th Anniversary flags.
Dozens of golfers will also be taking up limited-edition 50th Anniversary Signature Memberships at the prestigious venue.
Several county-level golf tournaments are also being hosted by St Mellion in 2026, in honour of its 50th Anniversary, and this year many long-serving staff are also being given the opportunity to speak about their own personal connections to the resort, including Penny Baxter who, after over 40 years working there, is St Mellion’s longest-serving active staff member.
“I started working at St Mellion as a waitress when I was at school, not long after it opened” she said. “It seemed unlikely that two Cornish farmers could turn St Mellion into an international-class golf resort, let alone persuade the Tiger Woods of his day to design one of the golf courses! Yet the Bond brothers pulled it off, and I was lucky to be here to witness almost all of its extraordinary history.”
Penny now coordinates St Mellion’s hundreds of annual conference and business events. “Every year we welcome thousands of people to this beautiful corner of Cornwall. We all feel so much pride at being part of St Mellion. We supply the expertise, and the customers supply the good vibes which keep us going!“
But what is it about St Mellion which inspires such devotion?
First opened for play in September 1976, St Mellion has grown from a single 18-hole golf course with a modest hotel, conceived and built by Cornish farmers Martin and Hermon Bond, into a vibrant, international-class golf resort with 36 holes of Tour-quality golf and an 80-bedroom 4-Star hotel with leisure and conferencing facilities deep in the heart of the UK’s #1 holiday destination.
Ranked among the Top 25 Golf Resorts in Great Britain & Ireland, and often listed in World Top 100 Golf Resort lists, St Mellion’s illustrious story now spans five decades with golfing legends including Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino and Sir Nick Faldo among the many iconic golfers who have walked its fairways.
Not forgetting of course the greatest of them all, Jack Nicklaus.
“St Mellion will always have a special place in my heart” said Nicklaus, now 86. “The Bond brothers were unwavering in their desire to bring a special golf experience to St Mellion. It was one of the most difficult pieces of property that I have ever worked with, but we were able to create a very, very good golf course there.”
The indefatigable Martin and Hermon Bond flew over to Nicklaus’s Memorial tournament in May 1982, at the height of The Golden Bear’s fame, to attempt to convince him to get involved in building a new 18 holes in a beautiful and dramatic countryside valley which, at first sight, looked as if it might pose a near-impossible challenge to the 18-time Major winner and renowned golf course architect.
But in July 1988, the Nicklaus Signature Course was opened by a stellar fourball – Nicklaus, Watson, Faldo and Sandy Lyle – and since then Jack’s golf course has itself featured regularly in many Top 100 lists over the years.
A book published in 2018, ‘ST MELLION – THE BOND LEGACY’ written by Paddy Flavin and Michael Taylor, is packed with anecdotes about how two Cornish famers created an internationally-acclaimed golf resort deep in the West of England.
Jeff Chapman, Founder of Crown Golf owners Bangarra Group, said: “As proud owners of the stunning and world-famous St Mellion Estate for close to half its lifetime of 50 years, my wife Carena and I have long considered it to be the ‘Jewel in the Crown’. Crown Golf has owned St. Mellion since 2004, accounting for 22 years of the last 50 which we are celebrating this year.
“We applaud the vision of the Bond brothers who collaborated with Jack Nicklaus to design the first-ever Nicklaus course outside of the USA, in the Cornish countryside.”
Chapman continued: “Established on farmland in 1976, the 36-hole St Mellion course, with its Old Course and the newer Jack Nicklaus-designed Signature layout, had established itself as both a tournament venue and a golf resort. But it had dropped off the big-golf radar, with its last European PGA Tour event held in 1995. So in 2006, the Bennelong Group decided to redevelop St Mellion completely, to bring it back to the forefront of European golf.
“But this celebration is about much more than that. It is about the community in which we work, and about the staff who feel a sense of pride and ownership working here at St. Mellion. From the hotel staff to the golf operations team to the greenkeeping team, this story is about the people!
“Most of all, it is about the golfers” said Chapman. “It is about the members who support the club, and it is about the golfers who travel from all over the world to play these magnificent golf courses set in the Cornish countryside.
“We are pleased to be part of this story.”
Another of St Mellion’s longest-serving staff members is its popular Golf Manager, David Moon, Midlands-born but now an honorary Cornishman after 33 years there. “It has been an absolute privilege to have been part of the St Mellion story for so long” he said. “I first saw it on TV, like many did when it hosted the B&H International Open for several years, with all the big stars playing there. The Nicklaus Course made for such compulsive viewing – each shot seemed to have some jeopardy to it.”
After hosting many thousands of golfers visiting St Mellion for golf days out, spending more than three decades as one of the friendly faces of the resort, Moon’s memories extend back to 1993 when he started as PGA Head Professional there. “At my first big tournament as host, the 1994 B&H International, I saw my all-time golfing hero Seve Ballesteros lift the trophy, up close. That was so special to me.
“I will forever be indebted to the Bond brothers who allowed a Wolverhampton boy with a thick Black Country accent to make St Mellion his second home” continued Moon. “To this day the investment from Crown Golf and the Bennelong Foundation ensures that we remain one of the UK’s finest golf & leisure businesses. To have played a part in helping so many wonderful people create their own personal stories to tell, after visiting our memorable corner of England, fills my heart with pride.”
The current chief custodian of St Mellion’s legacy is Resort Director Richard Woolley. “My connection to St Mellion is, like for so many others, deeply personal” he said. “My grandfather was a proud member here for over 20 years, and watching St Mellion both on TV and also spectating at tournaments where I got to see my heroes including Woosie and Faldo play just the other side of the ropes was a truly formative golf experience for me.
“After almost ten years at Crown Golf, to now be entrusted to steer such a visionary facility forwards is a huge honour, and I take this significant responsibility very seriously. As we enjoy our 50th Anniversary year, the team and I look forward to delivering a programme of memorable events to mark this occasion.”
Another staff member with a personal connection to St Mellion is Mike Bush, the estate’s multiple award-winning Course Manager who, in 2025, completed 30 years of service there. “My Dad and older brother both worked for the Bonds in the early days here at St Mellion, and I was proud to follow in their footsteps.”
Mike Bush continued: “Even my Mum was involved – she used to look after their racehorses when they summered at our farm, opposite the resort. My brother and I played golf as juniors here: in fact our whole childhood involved spending many days here at St Mellion with the members, and with the Bonds themselves.”
Bush was even there to witness Nicklaus at work, while the Signature Course was being built. “A core memory of mine is of standing in a massive hole in the ground when I was a young boy, watching a bulldozer at work. I had no clue, as a boy, as to the enormity and difficulty of the works going on. Later I realised I had been standing at the bottom of the famous pond on the 5th Hole of The Nicklaus Signature Course. Never did I think that one day I would be given the privileged task of looking after the masterpiece which Jack and his team created.”
Together, over the decades, the St Mellion team created one of Europe’s most celebrated venues – and one which attained near-legendary status for its level of challenge off the back tees.
But Nicklaus, ever-mindful of golf’s inherent difficulty, also created multiple forward tees to ensure that St Mellion remains, to this day, a fair test for all standards of golfer.
And one which, after five decades, still brims with the warm personality of Cornwall. St Mellion remains a facility which is unique to its core, capable of creating passionate memories among all who stay, play or relax there for a while.