Played Dormie Club Wednesday
(November 20) with a friend, a PGA apprentice over in Durham, at 12:33pm. We walked with our ClicGear push carts and finished just before 4:30.
The course was an easier walk than I remembered (from the first/most recent time I played it, almost 25 months earlier to the day, in 2017). The push carts helped of course, but the hills were slightly less severe for pushing than I remembered. The dormant rough didn't hurt either - the carts rolled through those really easily as well.
Tee shots didn't plug, but they occasionally made plug marks and didn't roll out very much. We played the back tees, and except for barely reaching the 13th with a 3-wood (it played into a little wind as well), we reached the greens with reasonable clubs.
I don't have too much to add to what I wrote before… so I'll try to keep this short. My friend isn't much of an architecture guy, so I tried to talk with him about some of the strategic choices, some of the controversial holes, etc.
3. He agrees it's somewhat boring: we hit 3W into the breeze as it was about 245 to the start of the sandy area to the right. Probably should have just hit hybrid as I was a yard into it, and he was just shy (but in the fairway). I hit a small sand wedge to eight feet of a back pin and made the putt. He agrees: it's not a hole you'd ever really hit driver. Especially not that early in the round. Maybe if it was a little shorter, and maybe if it was the 15th to 17th hole in the round… it may be interesting then. At 270, currently, off the back tee, you're driving into an area that's 30 yards wide.
4. I thought I remembered a fairway bunker left. I was wrong.
5. Really dug the back-right contour that took a ball chipped just a few feet too aggressively at a middle-right pin about ten feet off the green.
6. I remembered the bunker 60 yards short of the green differently than how it presented itself.
7. Holy hell, man. 245 into the wind. We both hit 3W. We both made bogey, though mine was from the left trees (once a draw gets up into that wind, boy, it draws!
) and his was from 35 feet away on the green.
8. We both got home with… 5I I think. Slightly downwind tee shots helped, though it also helped that he drove it further up the right-hand side, which threw his ball further DOWN the fairway, while my ball to the center kicked and rolled LEFT more. I'd love to study that a bit more to see if this is a little local knowledge thing - that you're better off taking a wider route around to the right than playing the inside of the dogleg. There's a bunker on the inside, too, which makes you think you'd love to be there… Interesting.
10. Driver, 3W, PW. I know people hate this hole. He liked it. He agreed with me that not every hole has to be "strategic" - sometimes you can just have a hole that says "you need to hit three good shots here." I told him the hole was disliked by many, and he liked it despite his score (his tee shot hung out well right).
12. We both enjoyed it. Hit what we thought were shots short-right, to what turns out to be a back-left hole, but when we got up there, our balls were middle of the green and had actually hit back right and rolled back down the slope a little.
13. Beast into the wind. He was short-right with Driver, 3W, I putted from the fringe front-left after hitting the same two clubs. 495 or so from the tees we played.
14. He didn't get the controversy here either. We both hit driver (probably should have hit 3W) to just in front of the bunker. He was more to the right so he could see more green, I played a little bit safer left. I had a 25-footer for birdie, he had an five-footer.
15. We had to play further left than we'd have liked given the wind into our faces.
I hope to maybe someday play the course when it's firm and fast. I think it'd be a hoot and a half. But, I'm glad to have played it twice when I did. The course was in better shape than I remembered, and the lack of any information about where on the green the holes were cut drove me nuts. I liked it, and I hated it at the same time!