The golf course!
Heading to Renaissance was a slightly weird experience. For starters I had never played a Tom Doak golf course before and the limited info on the Renaissance Club website and on here meant I'd not seen every hole from 15 different camera angles, so I had no idea what to expect.
The anticipation as a result was immense, and maybe in future I won't look at courses so encyclopaedically before I play them. It was fun to see a feature - a green or a bunker or a great piece of land - and be genuinely struck by it, rather than just thinking "oh yeah, there's the false front I read about".
I knew to expect width, but just how much there was shocked me a bit. It was awesome. There are a lot of lies on relatively benign ground in the cut stuff that you look up at the green and realise you are well out of position. There are sufficient slopes around and within most greens that you can play a brilliant recovery to get back in the game, but of course those greens are so playfully difficult that anything less than great shot planning and execution will be punished further.
I say "playfully" difficult because even when you are having your heart broken by them, they are just a delight to play. If I just said "difficult" that would give the wrong impression. Generally I found the slopes separated pretty sedate sections of green, and the edges often fed the ball away and down into a chipping area, but on several greens there were backboards or sideboards that could be used to feed the ball towards the hole.
If you hit an approach into the same sector of the green as the pin, the putts had surprisingly little break in them. Speaking from my own experience and listening to our forecaddie discuss lines with Andrew and Mike, rarely did such a putt have more than a couple of balls worth of break, a foot or so perhaps on a 20-30 footer. The massive break came when you'd played your approach or recovery shot to the wrong area of the green.
Approaching the greens, while the slopes were pretty major in many sections, often the transition from flattish areas to slopes was so gradual that it was hard to decipher from 150 yards or so away just where the area you could land and stop the ball ended and where the rollercoaster ride off the green and perhaps into a bunker began. That bit me a few times, but I was really impressed by it.
That was just part of the subtlety that was evident at Renaissance and will ensure its members find an endlessly engaging experience playing the course for years.
The front nine definitely has the flatter land, but for mine those holes held their own against those on the back more blessed with undulation.
The tees vary massively from about 7400 yards from the blues to 6800ish from the whites and 6250 or so from the yellows. We played a mixture. One thing I would say is that it's a course where you should choose your tees wisely. There is some fantastic interest off the tee that you could miss the enjoyment of by playing too far back or forward.
One play does not an expert make, but that was my feeling, for what it's worth.
Now for some pictures.
1st hole - straightaway mid-length par fourThe cool thing about the start of the round is that the first tee is part of the practice putting green.
The opening hole was a pretty good statement of intent of what was to follow: a wide fairway, but advantage to be gained if you took on the fairway bunkers. A centreline greenfront bunker meant that pin position should be considered from the tee. The green had some healthy breaks, but was probably among the more sedate greens.
I mentioned the greenfront centreline bunker. It was the first of many features I noted that looked as though they'd keep the course fresh for members and maintain the interest and challenge from round to round.
The drive:
Approach from the RHS:
The green:
