Ever since Sand Hills opened, the golfing community has been in love with shaggy bunkers. Yet, the real star of Sand Hills, at least for me, is the topography and the variety of ways that the holes fall across the landforms. Take away the bunkers and the course would look a lot more different than it would play. Here too at Eastward Ho!, its one-of-a-kind topography is the show stealer and there isn't a let-up on the roller-coaster ride that starts right out of the gate at the first. All my favorite courses have central hazards and its the topo rather than bunkers that create these playing dilemmas at Eastward Ho!
The infamous Tom MacWood is the one who brought this course to my attention eight years ago. Of course, he shouldn't have had to as there is a double page honker of an aerial photo of it in Whitten and Cornish's The Golf Course (pages 34-35 in my edition). How I had looked at that spread for many years and never focused in on what a great course it must be is beyond me. In part, it shows how low Eastward Ho! flew under the radar for too many years.
However, it also wasn't the course then that it is now either. Thanks to Keith Foster and Frank Hancock's work here for the past five years, much has been improved. There are a couple of before and after photos comparing the course as it was presented in 2003 vs. how it looked this fall. The one of the fourteenth hole
is a poster for tree removal.
The only knock I can say about the course is that it doesn't always produce the true champion, though Brad Faxon may disagree. Still, there is no better place to lose a match 9 & 8
than Eastward Ho!, provided that you don't stop at the eleventh, which we didn't.
Just look at some of these photographs and see if it doesn't represent one of the grandest settings for a game in all the world. Also, too, I contend its set of one shotters is in the top dozen in the game, a bold claim for sure but can you refute it?!
Cheers,