Recently I was fortunate to play Phoenixville CC (Phoenixville, PA). I was joined by
Dan Hermann Mike Cirba.
A big shout out must go to the head pro at PCC, Matt Dever, and his assistant Tim Feroe. We were treated like long time members.
Much is known about the early history of P'ville, a club that organized in 1915 (the Phoenixville Golf Club the forerunner at a nearby site):
http://www.phoenixvillecc.com/Default.aspx?p=DynamicModule&pageid=292779&ssid=173495&vnf=1Many feel Hugh Wilson is the architect, and that very well could be true. I've been looking for concrete evidence of this claim, but am still looking... but I hope to have more soon on this aspect so I ask all that reply to this thread to 'stay in your lane' and keep this discussion about the course and what you see in the photos and not take this thread down some well traveled, very bumpy, road.
The course finally got all 9 holes open for play in 1920 (aside: President Harding played P'ville in 1921 on a visit to Senator Knox in nearby Valley Forge; Warren shot a 53, for those keeping score at home).
Together with Mark McKeever (a former member at the club) and Mike Cirba, we've been trying to piece together the original routing. We say this b/c I have an article from 1921 that describes a big 4 ball match there and with the info provided by Frank McCracken of the Public Ledger, the course then is not quite the same as it is currently. More on that later.
Here is the current routing of the course from an October, 2011 Google Earth aerial (pink are par 4's, green par 5's, and yellow par 3's):
There are plenty of challenges at P'ville, the biggest being navigating the greens. If you play the back tees, it tops out at 2832 yards. From the white tees at 2740. On the card you play the white the front, the blues the back (frequently the blue tees are slightly different angles too) for a total of 5572 yards with par of 70. You might be surprised to know it rates at 69.4/129.
#1. You tee off right in front of the pro shop across a water filled ravine on a slight dogleg right par 4 (350 yards) that plays much more uphill that it appears.
A good drive leaves a short iron in to a wonderful greensite:
The approach shot plays much more uphill than we thought and we both came up short.
In this pic from short and right of the green, note how you see only about the top half of some very mature trees over the green. It is pretty steep back there and hence great care is needed on distance control for the approach.
This from short and left of the green:
I should have taken a pic from the 2nd tee back to the first green to show that over the green is dead.
#2. Drop-shot par 3 (146 yards). Some might say this looks familiar!
I don't know the elevation change, but it is significant (guessing maybe 80 feet).
From short and right of the green:
From long and left:
From long and right:
That green is very much sloped from right to left and that pin in particular was devilish. Mike was on the front of the green and his putt probably broke at least 10'.
#3. Dogleg left par 4 (342 yards), where the drive is blind to a fw that cants to the right.
It must be very hard to keep a ball in this fw, unless you hit a right to left shot into the slope.
If you don't hit your drive far enough, say still 150y in, you can't see the flag but you do have a directional flag:
From a bit closer in you can begin to see the flagstick:
You can pretty easily bounce one onto the green as it runs downhill pretty good, but does slope heavily to the right:
In those two pics above you can see the tee for the dogleg left par 4 just behind the green to the left.
A view from the back edge of the green:
Three more holes tomorrow.
