I got to play the almost brand new Potomac Shores club in Dumfries, VA (a little south of DC) on a hot, steamy day yesterday and wanted to pass along some thoughts I had since not many new courses are opening up anymore.
The course was originally started a few years ago but ran into some development issues. They officially opened for public play about 3 weeks ago (according to the girl in the pro shop) but it's obvious the course has been there for a good while longer. Everything was grown in nicely and other than the fledgling real estate development, you would think it's been around for years.
Some general thoughts on the course:
- The elevation changes - oh, the insanity. I've played a good number of courses and haven't seen elevation changes like this since maybe some rounds in northern Michigan. You're really introduced to the slopes on the par 5 3rd where the entire hole plays straight down a hill. You are then led back up to the top of the hill / mountain for the par 3 4th which was a good 1.5 clubs downhill. The tee to fairway drop on the par 4 9th is jaw dropping.
- The elevation certainliy inspires some wonderful visuals for the course, but the routing is crazy. No way on earth could anyone ever walk the course unless he/she was part billy goat. Just the drive from the 3rd green to the 4th tee took approximately 4 minutes. With that said, on a hot day, the voyage between those two holes was just what the doctor ordered as you felt like you were going through a cool tropical rainforest. If you decide to play and they tell you the course is cart path only, run away quickly.
- I have some concerns about the playability and the continued maitenance of the course. From a playability standpoint, the tips were 7000+ and the gold tees (next option) were 6355. As someone who normally plays courses around 6600-6700, the 6355 was pretty much all you'd want thank to the elevation and some forced carries. I don't know who the residential target market is around there, but I could see the general population getting very tired and very beat up having to play that course every day. From a maintenance perspective, the whole course is bent grass and there are some very very large bunkers that I have to imagine aren't exactly cheap to keep up. Case in point, just the amount of sand in the bunkers was overwhelming. 3 weeks into normal play and you could already see areas where the general player couldn't rake the bunker appropriately. For those of you who played Mike Strantz's Stonehouse and Royal New Kent where they first opened, that's what these bunkers reminded me of. And as Stonehouse has proven, it's ridiculously tough to maintain all of that consistently, especially if you happen to go through a deep recession.
- I wonder about the greens too as they had a ton of little humps and bumps in them. Very rarely did you have a flat put and my partner and I noticed a number of double breakers from <20 feet. Fortunately, they weren't overly fast (even somewhat slow in some areas). But for $95, the public is going to want tour level conditioning and I'm not sure those greens can support it.
- My vote for the best hole would be either the par 5 10th or the par 4 11th. The 10th, gives you a 230 yard carry option over a deep bunker, at which point you have about 230-250 downhill to a wide green. The catch is that the fairway on the approach is split in half by a small grove of trees and rough, so if you're going for the green, you better have some curve to your shot. Otherwise, you still get to decide from which angle you'd like to approach the green. The par 4 11th is short on the card (only about 360), but plays slightly uphill and doglegs right. A shot that isn't hit far enough winds up being visually blocked from the green, but a longer tee shot opens up to an approach straight down the entrance to the green and eliminates the need to carry a fairly wide bunker.
- As with many Nicklaus courses, you better bring your high fade (for a righty) shot.
- Awesome southern decor clubhouse
- Must say I was rather disappointed that even bordering the Potomac, there were zero views of the river.
Here's the website if you want to take a further look -
http://www.potomacshoresgolfclub.com/. Feel free to ask questions if you want and I'll try to respond.