Galen Hall Golf Club - Wernersville, PAAlex Findlay/Henry Williams 1907, A.W. Tillinghast 1917, William Gordon/David Gordon 1955
Doak Scale Score - 6The 193 yard long "Moat Hole" to an island green asks a lot of tough questions to the golfer.If you are a lover of quirk, Galen Hall Golf Club in the hills of east-central Pennsylvania not far from Reading is your cup of tea.
Built originally as part of a hotel resort that offered a summer getaway and winter skiing, nine original holes were built by Alex Findlay with the property owner, and a decade later A. W. Tillinghast expanded the course to a full eighteen holes.
After a drive and pitch par four opener along the property boundary/entrance road to a shelf of an elevated green tilted sharply left to right, you are quickly served notice that this will not be standard fare golf on the 2nd hole, an up-and-over par five on steroids featuring a road crossing and then a reverse NASCAR banked turn to the left off a mountaintop to an elevated green far below.
Counter-intuitively, a drive well over into the right rough provides both a look at the distant green in the valley and the proverbial snowball's chance in hell of going for the green in two. But from this vantage point, who could resist trying?Conversely, here is the view everyone who takes that silly straight path up the middle of the fairway sees for their second shot, photo from the Bausch Archives.The third continues with a lovely dogleg left, again along a road left with an approach over a public road sunken just below the green in a "ha-ha". Time for Funk & Wagnalls; "A ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond. The design includes a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face."
Four is a par six hole...actually a par three hole that should be a par six. It is 195 yards, slightly downhill, with a diagonal creek in front wrapping around the right side with another road and OB a few paces left and a hillside with broken ground behind and right. You know the proper shot is a layup, it's the #2 handicap hole on the course, yet once again who could resist attempting to hit such a simultaneously inviting and fearsome target? (photo courtesy of the Bausch Collection)
Temptation gets the best of almost everyone on the fourth hole at Galen Hall.And so it goes. Some of the course is a slightly more standard, particularly those at the end of the property added by the Gordons in the 50s, but given the terrain the course does indeed keep you on your toes and never grows in any way tiresome or routine.
So it really is no big surprise when one finishes playing the long, 453 yard, number one handicap 14th hole with two creek crossings to come to the next hole and find a 193 yard par three to an island green propped up about 8 feet around, the famous "Moat Hole".
Consider that at this point you're still in the lower part of the property and need to get back up to the hilltop clubhouse and you'll get a sense of the final three holes, the 350 yard 16th, the 184 yard 17th steeply uphill across a ravine, and the uphill but reachable, bunkerless 480 yard par five finisher with a lovely, large green in full view of those dining on the clubhouse deck as you complete your round.
What's even cooler is with all of the challenging terrain, Galen Hall is routed so thoughtfully that it really is a great walk over 100 years later. What more could you want?