I got the pleasure of seeing other GCA’ers on the trip. The Lang couple rivalry appears just as strong as it was when we played together at Kingsley. I met David Madison for the first time and learned that bunkers 300 yards off the tee actually can come into play.
We played five courses. By far the star of the group is Fallen Oak associated with the Beau Rivage Casino. The course is the Biloxi version of Shadow Creek complete with a limo ride to the course, a secretive location and outstanding service. The Tom Fazio course might be better than Shadow Creek. It presents endless variety, is in impeccable condition, is challenging while still being playable for all levels, sits on a nice piece of land and has a distinctive bunker style that must cost a mint to maintain.
This is a picture of one of the practice greens:
Other courses in rough order of preference included:
The Preserve (Pate)
Shell Landing (Love)
Grand Bear (Nicklaus)
The Oaks (cannot remember)
All of these courses were pleasant experiences generally designed for fun rather than punishment. The Preserve brings the most water into play, and requires that one be able to keep the ball within reasonable corridors. It features small greens and places reasonable demands on the player without becoming a death march.
Shell Landing offers ample room off the tee and interesting greens with significant contour as its primary defense. Recent topdressing and slow greens on the day we visited made the undulations significantly less daunting than what I assume is typical.
Grand Bear must be from Nicklaus’ gentler period – fairways are wide and the demands on iron play are significant but not as difficult as presented on some of his mean courses.
The Oaks fits into relatively tight tree lined corridors. Its greens are interesting for the first few holes but repeat so often that it is difficult to differentiate them when one thinks back at the end of the round.
The flat terrain and sandy soil lends itself to better golf than pictures but here are a few shots. I will need to do some research in order to describe them:
