Southward Ho Country Club (Bay Shore, NY)--Course Photos

[Sam Kestin]

Really really liked this golf course. As I said in another post, the land itself is nothing special...but it's such a well "made" golf course. The strategic choices on both the tees and the greens (thanks to some great Tillinghast green complexes) made for a thinking man's round out there. Definitely looking forward to the prospect of playing in the Havemeyer out there one of these days.

What did some of you guys out there think about it?

Here are some photos:

 

[Sam Kestin]

Photo #1--Short par-five second hole...view from behind the green.

Photo #2--Long par-four third hole from cross bunker short of the green.

Photo #3--Approach shot to the second...with the town's water tower in the background.

Photos #4/#5--The seventh green from the front and the back.

Photo #6--The approach to the shortish par-4 eighth. The hole doglegs right around a grove of trees...failed attempts to cut the corner result in a second shot played from the area depicted in the photo's inset.

Photo #7--You guessed it...the clubhouse.

[Sam Kestin]

Here are a couple of "watercolor" photos I did on Photoshop as well. You guys can probably figure out which hole is which since a lot of them originate from photos above...but just in case:

1) The seventh green.

2) The eighth green.

3) The fourteenth green (not pictured above).

[Phil_the_Author]

Sam,

How would you compare the relative lack of dynamic contouring of the putting surfaces to those at Bethpage Black?

[Matt_Ward]

Sam;

Great post -- i like southward ho! for what it provides and played a number of rounds there when competing in past Havemayer events. No doubt it's more of a membership oriented club -- not a championship caliber intense one like WF or BB.

The key to the course is right after you finish playing the short par-4 13th -- once you make that turn you generally head back into the prevailing southerly / southwest wind off the nearby Atlantic.

The par-3 14th is one of LI's best par-3 holes. great green site and protected ever so well by the diual bunkers both left and right.

each of the final five holes is nicely done -- not really long per se but the wind and challenges are present.

For those who want to play a Tillie with small fangs (I mean that positively) Southward Ho! is most certainly worth a look.

p.s. Got to love the par-4 8th as well - unique double-tier green -- the only downside is the awkward rulings you can get there if you hit too far left with the path and the ob road so close to each other.

[Sam Kestin]

Mr. Ward/Phil--

My post that comes right after this will respond to your thoughts...but first let me throw up some more photos. I want to make sure Phil can download a bunch of these for anything he needs and I might as well share them with everybody while I'm at it...

Here is the tour of what these photos are:

Photo #1--The "watercolor" version of the clubhouse photo seen above.

Photo #2--The view from behind the par-5 tenth green. Who knew about this chipping area? You have no idea it's there based on the view from the approach area (see below photo) and it's beyond brutal to hit it back there if the pin is the back of the green...a green that slopes from the back to front (as do most).

Photo #3--What you see on the approach shot if you fail to hit a drive that allows you to carry the cross bunker roughly 100 yards short of the green. Lucky for us it was a front pin because knowing me, to a back pin, I'd have gotten too frisky and dumped it over the green into the evil chipping area seen in Photo #2.

Photo #4--The "watercolor" of the tee shot at the beautiful par-4 13th...a beautiful dogleg left that takes you back to the corner of the property prior to the turn for home Mr. Ward describes in his post.

Photo #5--The view of the green complex at the par-4 14th (also described by Mr. Ward in his post) from the cross bunker some 40 yards short of the green. Check the watercolor of this hole (in the second series of photo/watercolor posts) for the view from the tee. This picture is taken from the cross bunker you see in that image.

Photo #6--The shortish par-4 fifteenth hole tee shot with insets to illustrate the hole's major strategic challenge. Without thinking, I sort of drove it down the left hand side of the fairway thinking that would cut some yardage off on my second. Of course, upon further review (once I got to my ball), I was in terrible shape. Check the bottom left inset...this is the view if you aren't smart about placing the ball on the proper side of the fairway off the tee. View the top right inset...this "can of corn" (or as Johnny Miller would say, "butter cream bakery") short iron is what awaits those smarter than me.

Photo #7--The brutally tough par-3 seventeenth hole. 200+ yards to this green...but, as you may or may not be able to tell from the inset, the angle of the long iron (or, in my case, fairway wood) shot in is really rough. The cross bunker complicates depth perception (Phil--I'm noticing as I gain exposure to his work that this is a Tillinghast trademark--am I correct in this assumption? You'd know better than me...) and the grove of trees makes viewing a right flagstick impossible. The pin as viewed in this photo was out of sight from the tee...which makes any shot infinitely more unsettling.   

--Sam

[Sam Kestin]

Argh...not sure why the photo of #15 didn't work. Let's try again.

[Sam Kestin]

Now, for a necessarily brief reply (on the tee w. Pops for Fathers Day in 90 minutes) to Mr. Ward...who makes a good point about the wind. Having played it just the one time, I didn't really know that the wind generally blows the way it did for us. That wind condition (off the water...makes sense...) for sure adds teeth to that tough closing stretch of 3 holes. It makes 18 and 16 (both reasonably long in comparison to the rest of the course) play into the wind while the par-3 17th usually plays downwind (which is no help at all for a guy like me trying to slice a driver in there...).

As far as your comment about the 8th...sadly, didn't get to figure out that little nuance to it. Played the entire hole from about 90 yards right of center (see inset in photo series at the top) and made what i call a "Gimme-A-Six." The ole' single digit special...can't take more than a double for handicap purposes. May be cheating, sure...but certainly saves me the effort of slashing my way to the (more than) occasional 12 like I did in the Richardson Invitational this year (which included a 2 shot penalty for pulling a Jeff Maggert and hitting myself out of a fairway bunker).

Really, you sum the place up best..."a Tillie with small fangs" (meant in a good way)...I loved it. I've played Winged Foot (West) and Bethpage SP (Black) enough times from the way back tees. At 5'6" and 110 pounds...I don't mind the small fangs!

Phil--

This is another short response but the lack of dynamic contours I noticed kind of less than you might think because of the way the greens are oriented. The angles created by the little fingers to many greens and the slopes off the bunkers that guard these fingers made the relative lack of dramatic contour almost hard to notice. I hadn't even really thought about it until you mentioned it. For example...a back-left pin on #7 or back-left on #10 are both brutal even though there really aren't too many crazy slopes around them.

By the way, Phil, just so you don't think I'm ignoring you...I'm going to shoot you an email later this afternoon (when I get done with the Dad's Day festivities) with some more photos for your archives and a little bit more about my future plans and questions about how I might be able to make those plans simultaneously more helpful to you and the Tillie society. I think you should be able to download what I don't send you off here but if not let me know. Either way, if you're available, I'd love to catch up on the phone sometime tomorrow if you're available.