What is the yardage/rating/slope of your home course and a brief description?

Belmont Country Club

White Tees

69.8/125

6329 Yards

 

My home course is not considered a long course.  It has a lot of well placed bunkers and doglegs.  My course is fairly flat and doesn't have lots of undulation in the greens. But what my course does do is forces you to be accurate and play almost every club in your bag.  Guys who hit it really long will usually find themselves in a lot of trouble unless they could draw or fade on purpose. I would consider the fairways as average size to some on the narrow side.  Greens are the average to small size. Must be able to chip well at my course too, the rough, fringes around the green will kill you if you can't.

 

Overall my course is a technical course that favors the accurate guy who can play all clubs in their bag.

All 4 par 3's are of different lengths; 112, 198, 166, 161 the last 2 they set the tees up at different lengths after we complained about hitting the same club from both.

 

A lot of the par 4's are risk/reward where you could hit Driver but you are bringing in to play lots of bunkers.  So most people hit anything from Driver all the way down to 5I to tee off on par 4's

 

Heck even one of the par 5's I tee off with a 3W because if you hit your driver 250 and straight your in a bunker.

 

I totally agree with you about playing the same clubs all day.  I think my course helps me become a more complete golfer.

70.5/130

6378

 

The single defining feature has to be the hills.  Uphill, downhill, sidehill, you name it.  There are 3 flat holes and the rest have major elevation changes that require one to two club adjustments.  Many blind shots.  Good variety of par 3's (135, 140, 165, 175, 200).

 

The first and last par 5's are really tough.  The first has two forced carries, so you really can't reach in 2 and have to play three short shots to get on in regulation (I typically play 3H, 3H, 9i).  The last is par 5 is well known in the area and probably the toughest hole I've ever played.  Tight landing area but you can only hit it 230 or so without getting into trouble.  A perfect tee shot leaves you 250 from the green, with a huge valley in between.  So you've got woods to the left, a 35* upslope if you're short, and total jail to the right.  The only play is to shoot for a narrow landing area, about 160 yards away, over water, that leaves you looking up 25 feet to a green from an awkward angle.  

 

I think the greens stimp at about 9.  They tend to be really big and very sloped.  Pin locations often have slopes of 3.5* or more.  

My home course is the same way, for 90% of the course the only shot from flat ground is on the tee box, otherwise you have uphill, downhill, sidehill, uphill/sidehill together..lol. 

 

69/123 and the length from the blues is 6,043, short course. However, most other courses really complain when a golfer from the course enters one of their tournaments that's handicapped because our course really is not sloped/rated correctly in most people's opinion. I will easily go to other "more difficult" courses and shoot below my actual handicap. Our course is tight on almost every hole compared to most courses so when golfing elsewhere. This has been the trend for a lot of the members at my course. One of my favorite aspects of the course is you have so many options that all have risk/reward. It's tight but also short so you don't need to go with driver but the reward of using driver means a really short shot on many holes into the green. You also have great views on almost every hole, wouldn't trade the course for any other home course!

White tees 6315, 70.4, 125

 

Robert Trent Jones - but not close to the original design, most likely as the owners (Racing magnet Roger Penskie owns the course, but has never been out there, from what I've heard) have filled in a lot of the fairway bunkers. Huge flat greens. As a golfer you can get lazy as you get away with bad shots and still are on the greens, imo. The course is in crappy condition - but the green fees are by far lower than the other area courses.

 

http://www.apollobeachgolf.com/course/

 

 

 

71.6 / 124 at 6588 yds. Tips are 73.7 / 131 at 7024, but that's too long for my tired old butt.

Good, challenging course, but as you can see from the relatively benign slope, it's very playable for the mid/high hcp players in our group too.

Water only comes into play on 3 holes, but there are over 80 bunkers and a ton of large, sand waste areas and the wind tends to blow a lot. Greens and fairways are very well maintained, but the rough is allowed to go pretty wild with some really cruddy, sandy barren areas mixed in so if you stray too much you'll pay a price. 3 good short par fours and 2 reachable par 5's. All of them are classic risk/reward holes though so if you don't pull off the shot, you'll likely get bit.

Haile Plantation Golf and Country Club.  I play from the Whites as a 16 HCP.  Not a terribly difficult course, water in play on just a couple of holes, not terribly long overall.  It's an odd track in that that almost all of the par 4s are pretty short, a couple under 300yds from my tees, but the par 3s are pretty tough, long and tight or over water and well protected with sand.  So lots of opportunities on the par 4s, but lots of potential for high scores on the par 3s as well

 

Par71

Whites 5764yds 67.7/119

Blues 6166 69.5/124

Black 6505 71/128

I used to love playing Haile Plantation back in the day. It's private now right?

Golf Club of Ocala. I play from the whites.

5978 yards

rating: 68.30

Slope: 117

There are two courses at my "home" course at Terra Lago. From the tees I normally play, the North rates at 71.4/132 and the South rates at 71.6/133. They play to yardages of 6,511 and 6,401 respectively. Both are great layouts that could be maintained better, but since they aren't they price is a little less than others around. The front 9 of each has holes with some good elevation changes and you have options off the tee on most. Holes 5 and 6 on the North are both par 5 with nearly the same yardage (around 550 from the yellows) but play completely differently. On 6, a good drive will lead to a pinched landing area where as a good drive on 5 leads you to a much wider open area. The green on 6 is much more protected and elevated where as on 5 you can go for it if you have the length (I don't). The difficulty of the North seems to be pretty even though out where as the South is a bitch until you get through 11 and then it gets much easier.

To my knowledge, Haile has always been a private club, dating back to '93 when they first opened.  I remember because I worked there that summer after graduating high school :)  I've just started playing as a new member in the last month or so, but I'm enjoying it.  It's close to my house, the staff is very nice, it's in good shape.  It's not meticulous all the way around, but pretty much everything but the tee boxes are very well maintained.  Not sure why the tee boxes are seemingly ignored for the most part, but frankly it doesn't bother me much.  I do prefer to hit my irons off the turf, but they're not so bad that you can't find a spot to hit from.  Maybe they will be better in the spring/summer.

Reston National (Western DC Suburbs)

Par 71

From the Blacks 6479 yards

Rating 71.1

Slope 128

 

Great starting hole, easiest par 4 on the course with a downhill tee shot straight away and plenty of landing area, it's a good confidence booster. So it starts par 4, 5, 3, then again 4, 5, 3 and finishes up with 4 and 4.  It's gently rolling with only one flat hole, but only a couple of blind shots. I find the par 3's challenging at 163, 183, 161, and 193...although only the first of those is uphill, 2 are downhill shots and the 161 11th is essentially flat.

 

I've played with lots of different folks there and I have yet to meet anyone that can get on the par 5's in two shots, they are (485, 507, 500). So far they really are 3 shots to get a GIR. Course condition is pretty good, but it has a lot of traffic. Just two weeks ago they had 125 rounds on a Sunday in February, which is pretty good. In the spring and summer they do 300 rounds each weekend day. They are known for slow rounds on days like that. I play the front 9 at twilight rates to get my golf in, and there is a good group of regulars that you see doing that. Those folks all walk (great course to walk) and move on around at a good pace.

 

It is well run by Billy Caspar Golf and I've enjoyed playing there. Here is a link to the scorecard.

 

http://www.restonnationalgc.com/Reston-Virginia-The-Course.html

That's one of the courses I've been meaning to play.  My course (Redgate, in Rockville) is also run by Billy Casper.  The annual pass at one of his courses get you $30 rates at all the others.  

I used to play it when it first opened. I always played it with a buddy who worked for a large investment firm so maybe he had a corporate membership. I have a customer in Haile Plantation and I want to play everytime I'm out there . You ever get to Ocala to play?

Farmington Hills Golf Club-Farmington Hills, MI

 

Blue tees (back tees)

6413 yards

Par 71

Slope of 136

Rating of 70.8

 

This is a relatively new muni (about 13 years old) which once was a nine hole course. An entirely new 9 was built on an old landfill and the original 9 was totally redone and is now the back 9. The front features a fair amount of wetlands but only 1 forced carry (6th hole, par 4). The back has less water and where the front has tall pine trees the back has older maples, oaks and the like. The front is tighter off the tees. Missed tee shots on 1, 3, 6 and nine can mean lost balls. The land is lightly rolling but there are no severe hills. Not many bunkers. The main defenses are the tight fairways on the front nine and long par 3's on the back nine which both play uphill and about 190 yards. My favorite holes are the second, a short par 4 of 318 yards where you can either gamble with a driver off the tee or lay up short of a cross bunker and the par 5 14 which is a dogleg right requiring well placed shots to reach the green. If your second shot does not hug the left side of the fairway, trees block your approach.

 

Overall it's a well maintained and laid out course that is challenging but fair and easy to walk.