South Bend Country Club (pictures)

[Andy Troeger]

South Bend CC (Indiana)



#1 Par 4 316 Yards. Short hole going sharply downhill from the tee then back uphill to a steeply sloping green. Drops off sharply to the right of the green. Tee shot must favor right side of fairway for best angle and to avoid trees. Tricky opener.



#2 Par 4 321 Yards. Another short but tricky par four with a TINY green. The approach must be high and precise, and the green slopes toward the front so long and left are dead. Short and right are not great either.



#4 Par 3 150 Yards. After a long par 4 third this is one of my favorite par threes anywhere. This green is also very tiny as would fit a hole of this length. The bunkers are better than the rough here.



#5 Par 5 507 Yards. This hole practically makes a C shape around the lake to the right. The picture is taken from the fairway area between a long tee shot and a lay-up approach. Anyone going for the green must attack a very wide but shallow target, while the layup would come at a 90 degree angle making the green long but narrow. Very reachable, but at your own peril!



#6 Par 4 461 Yards. This photo is taken from just into the right rough. The tee shot is blind over the crest of a hill. A well struck drive will roll making the hole play much shorter leaving a mid-iron approach. Don't miss right, as the trees will make life challenging.



#8 Par 4 361 Yards. From behind the green one can see the hole goes downhill into the landing area then back up to the green. The iron shot is the key here as long is death and short leaves a tricky shot over a 4 foot high false front.


Wish I had pictures of holes 9--14 as there are good ones, but I got rained out on picture taking day, but I do have a few older ones from 15--18.


#15 Par 3 139 Yards. This hole looks pretty simple at first glance, but the winds coming off the lake (or anywhere else) make this little wedge shot much more tricky than it looks.



#16 Par 4 388 Yards. The back tee here is not for the faint of heart! The white tee is much shorter with an opportunity to lay up left and avoid the carry somewhat.



#17 Par 3 211 Yards. Much longer hole that shares some similarities with the 4th. This green is quite a bit larger and flatter than some of the others.



#18 Par 5 478 Yards. This hole plays quite a bit longer than the yardage as the tee shot generally gets no roll and the 2nd shot is steeply uphill. The green along with #9 is the most severe on the course and anything past the hole is very difficult. It is not uncommon to be near the green in two and walk away with a 6 or worse. The bunker on the side of the hill is to be avoided at all cost!


Hopefully at some point I will be able to complete the photo tour but wanted to share what I do have. The course plays to 6500 yards par 71, so its not long, but is great fun to play!

[Steve Burrows]

Andy,

Last time I was up there, I remember the Superintendent telling me that the membership prefers some of the fairways to be mown at fairway height all the way up to the green, but on others the fairway stops and the rough covers the areas in front of the green.  The two that stand out from the pictures (and these are the ones that I remember being discussed during my visit), are #2 and, more importantly, #18.  

How does #18 play with rough on the hill side instead of with fairway?  Isn't there a chance that a ball would roll all the way down to the base of the hill if it were cut at fairway height?  I believe that (and the difficulty of getting a fairway unit up the hill in the morning dew) was the reason, as it was told to me?  Or did I hear that wrong?

A fun course to play, nonetheless.

[Phil McDade]

Andy:

Boy, that green on 2 looks miniscule. Any details on age, designer and other work on the course?

[Andy Troeger]

Phil,
The course was originally designed by George O'Neil in 1916. I do not know what works has been done on the course since that time. They did just spend a lot of money on a new clubhouse maybe 5 years ago that was not especially popular with the membership at the time.

Steve,
It is interesting how some of the holes have fairway all the way up to the greens and others do not. Off the top of my head only #1, 2, 11, and 18 have rough in between fairway and green. On all of these, the approach is uphill. Some of the other approaches are also uphill, but do have at least some fairway leading up to the green (#9 and 14 are the ones I'm thinking of).

There have not been any major maintenance changes to this in the 15-20 years I've played the course. I could certainly see #18 being a case where if everything was mowed at fairway height where 80 yards worth of golf balls would all roll down the hill. #2 would be a more interesting case since the hill isn't that long, but it is steep. I do think it has to be much easier to maintain the course as is than trying to figure out how to mow those areas to fairway height.

[Bill Gayne]

Not to derail the thread but how is the nine hole course behind the Morris Inn? Every summer growing up my Dad would bring us to the Morris Inn and I loved the trips to South Bend.

[Andy Troeger]

Bill,
The ND Burke course is pretty ordinary...flat with some nice views of the dome and other parts of campus (Morrissey Manor on #9...my old dorm!), but otherwise there's not a huge amount of golf interest to it really. The Warren Course NE of campus on the other hand is worth seeing.

SBCC takes the cake in Northern Indiana for me. Blackthorn, Warren, and Morris Park are what I would consider the next best three in South Bend.

[Andy Troeger]

Found one more picture and hoping to generate some more views and interest on SBCC!



#14 Par 4 400 yards. This picture really doesn't do the hole justice as its drastically uphill on the second shot with a falloff to the right. Tough driving hole with two bunkers, OB right, and trees and a tiny creek bed to the left. After I set a personal 9 hole record on the front I proceeded to make an 8 here...oops.

[Rob_Waldron]

Bill

A portion of the Burke Course has been lost to Dorms. The University is considering a renovation of the remaining course to be used for Phys Ed. Rick Jacobson has provided a master plan with a new routing including a practice area. ND has yet to pull the trigger on the remodel.

[RSLivingston_III]

I visited South Bend last summer with Rick Holland. We were doing a little George O'Neil course chasing. He has assembled a fairly complete history of O'Neil and we wanted to see the progression of his style. This being an early attempt by George, and in need of a restoration, it reminded me of of some of Bendelows work. I would really like to see a 1938 USGS, or of course something earlier, to potentially see what was there and go stomp around the course again.
It was a fun course and how he used some of the elevation changes was very interesting.
If you are interested in seeing the developement of an architects style, go see Tippicanoe GC after this. He did it some 10 years later and you will have a blast seeing the great double sided bunkering that is buried in the tree lines.
It appears he might have started using these double sided bunkers at South Bend, but it is hard to discern on some of the parallell fairways what is left of the structure. (Need old aerials!)
It is evident that South Bend is missing fairway bunkering.
Go see it if you are in the area, there is enough left to see and learn about what they were doing in the teens, architecture wise.

[Brian Joines]

Andy,

Thanks for starting this thread. I've got a bunch of pictures from SBCC that I can post when I am back home.

Brian

[mike_malone]

 Is there a safety reason for that last clump of trees on the left of #1 ?  Without them the left side becomes "approachable" from the left side of the fairway or the rough. There also seems to be some interesting slopes around the trees. Why waste that playable area?

[Andy Troeger]

Ralph,
Thanks for the insight, I admittedly know next to nothing about the history of the course.

Mayday,
The trees do make the hole more difficult as they block out the left side. It is not an impossible shot, but the recovery is made quite a bit more challenging. There would be some interesting choices to be made if they were thinned to allow a low shot off the hillside. The 9th tee is on the top of the hill, so there could be some safety concerns in having them there. That said, they could certainly be thinned without having much impact on safety IMO.