Worst Holes in Classic Westchester - Back Nine

[V. Kmetz]

The Tour continues... IF you're a 6-7 HCP, you've probably shot 47 and starting to think you play too much...if you're a 10-14 HCP, you probably had the highest nine in 20 years and looking forward to your upcoming knee operation...if you're in the 18+ category, you're down to a Slazenger 384 and an orange Top Flite (with the old "sans-serif" font)...after those two, it's the nearest water-hazard and the ball-retriever... (As a veteran caddie and a knowing soul, I myself follow the 8-ball rule...for if I ever lose 7 balls at any point before #18...I'm driving in then and there)

By the numbers...

#10 Bonnie Briar 201 yds- In prepping this list, I was somewhat startled to recall how many one-shot holes appear as the 10th hole in this classic district...WFW, QR, Westchester CC, Sleepy Hollow, Blind Brook, Mount Kisco, Bedford GT, St. Andrews, Pelham... but this one draws my ire for two main reasons...first, it interrupts the best stretch of what is a course (like the other Larchmont track, Hampshire) that is tarred with a poorer reputation than it actually deserves. The second reason is that I see a fine and fun hole here, but the enduring presentation is too far (200 to what should be 175-80) for the dangerous semi-blind downhill hit which features bunkers and cliff perdition right and long, and a remaining cluster of trees/bunker hard left of the green complex. If those four trees were thinned to one/two specimens and the left bunker replaced by kicking slope...you'd have a shorter version of the Reverse Redan 7th at Sleepy Hollow. Albeit less grand, less dramatic, you'd have a very fun and challenging shot that players of differing abilities would play multiple ways. As is, at 200 distant downhill yards, belted by lost ball and other double-bogey problems...it's a very sour, confining proposition.


#11 Fenway 200 yards - Ha! Joke's on you, if you didn't think I could string four awful 200+ holes together on Worstchester Hills Country Club...and MORE sacrilege...it's on a under-radar Tillie that many have been looking to canonize in recent years...but this one is the most souring I know...I don't know about you, but blind, dead uphill Par 3s with bunkers, green margins and any strategic contouring to be suggested by 1/3rd of a flag visible...are not my cup of Earl Grey. Just about everyone is simply flailing a 3 iron to 3-wood (if not driver) up this nasty 40 foot side of cone repelling balls to oblivion left and long...there's no shaping...no "hugging"/skirting a path...no lofting or flighting down, no perceived running play... no discernible miss (except short) and a mishit of enough strength might end up in the same place as a crisp hit just a blind smidge this way or that...and what's your reward if you pull it off? A gentle green with mild contours, which permits scrambling for a variety of what are unseen results? Hell no...it's the most vicious back to front green on the course, where balls break 12 feet from the sides and runs at 14.5, when the greens are 10... the more recent reno-storation work is certainly a boon to this and other Fenway hardships, yet the only improvement I could see is to present the hole as bunkerless with closely mown area ringing enlarged green margins...that might be fun;... this is Tillie trapped in a vicious corner of the property, who has in mind other certain holes that he is unwilling to give up; so he'll hold his nose, satisfied to make this one thing unreasonable and out of character with his reputation for first rate Par 3s all over this district.


12 - St Andrews GC 550yds - I vexed over including any holes of this brutally hilly and artificial Nicklaus redesign of the 1980s, but the hole is a paradigm of awful Westchester property that is best for Army ranger training, where golf balls bound away unseen, where a mobile cardiology unit ought to run stress tests. ...11 goes up the highest mountain and 12 comes straight back down along an 80 foot drop itself played flush to NYS Thruway 1-87 a further 150 feet below the entire right side of its 550 yards. The golfer merely bashes off into air and space...twice...tumbling down a stair case descent where I'm positive men have forgotten themselves and done frightening, dewy morn' 720s in their 1200 lb golf cart...you know... "Whooooaaaa!" When you sail one right here, you'll be as positive that the ball is lost as playing the middle of Pebble Beach...it's not a provisional...it's the ball in play.

13. Knollwood 325 yards - This one is easily the least controversial of my picks after #1 at Ardsley...here you behold a 70 degree dogleg right....featuring an 80 foot tee shot drop (where you can hit anything from 6 iron to 5 wood and still end up in the same bed sheet of fairway, with the nastiest fescue/cart path and forest woods you've ever seen on the inside of the elbow....  left outside and through the elbow is OB.... and the recent renovation has seen fit to add a pittish fairway bunker on the inside corner.   If I was fully using all Westchester holes, this would be a perfect place to tar tRump National Briarcliff's infamous waterfall hole - featuring a blind 200 yard island green par 3 in its basin, but that use of the  former Billy Goat-Briar Hall property is its own modern category... this one is the "classic."


14.  Bedford Golf and Tennis - 420 yards - Though it has a handful of charming/interesting holes (1-5, 9-12) and a turn of century ambiance to match its vintage, Bedford possesses some deeply unfriendly features and an equal number of sour medal-busters that are a grind.  A cluster of these exist in the property corner stretch from 13 - 16, parallel 4s and 5s down and back up a 35 foot incline, separated by thin phalanxes of non-specimen trees . This one - an uphill 420 that plays like 450 is just an rising crowned, bowling alley off the tee, a banal grind with framing trees ready to stifle par and threaten bogey recovery...if you can get it 230-40 up the hill in play, the next uphill shot of 180 200 actually looks attractive, as the fairway tumbles through a dip, rising steeply to the approach front...but the green complex has it all wrong for a hole of this length and requirements...it is larded with 4 framing bunkers (two left, two right) that are deep, awkward and vicious and gobble everything off center from 3 to 10 o' clock...missing long is no option either for the green has a severe Back-Front tilt running to back to that fairway dip and up and downs less likely than a double.  I've only played/worked Bedford 12-15 times, but I've seen more pickups and round-killing scores on that water-less hole than ones I've seen 100x.

15. Ardsley 315 yards - While #1 cements the reputation of Ardsley of a tight, mean, hilly and unsatisfying collection of golf problems, it's actually the back nine where the confinement, the bad bounces, the blocked angles, the lost balls, the scores and the disgust inflates. In the middle of that closing side comes this little bastard, which were it not for the most artificially-imposed Belgian block-lined pond cut into 4/5ths of the approach, could be imagined as a neat little Drive & Pitch/Drivable 4. Without the pond (which a 250 downhill hit can reach =no longer drivable) the navigations might provoke a lot of fun play...But with it, it is foolish to hit much more than 210 yards...not only is the hole encased in a shoebox of trees, but the fairway gets steeper the closer to the green you come... now you come to that 50 - 100 yard wedge...off a downhill lie with lost ball death long and a pond in front... get ready for your X.

16. Scarsdale GC - 370 yards - this is probably the most architecturally "sound" of all the choices on this Worstchester Golf Club course, yet it is also the most ridiculously overgrown with trees of any hole on the list. No, the sensible tree executioners have not yet descended on this Tillie-boned track, at Scarsdale, it's like the 1970s still... Besides a thick stand of almost 30 trees that frame the entire left boundary of the hole, the right side features two big specimen suckers (at 270 and 310 out from the tee) that shut down most aerial plays from the right half, the half which the downhill tilt of the hole sends most in-play drives... throw in a push up green that shrugs off balls not in the center ring and you end up having an exercise in perfectly straight hitting...yet, if they would take down 80% of the trees, this hole would probably come off my list.

17. Metropolis CC - 340 yards - 17 and 18 at this Herbert Strong-boned/Tillie-altered design are probably the single biggest let-down closing duo of an otherwise interesting, well-regarded golf course. Metropolis (once the property home of Century before 1922-23) is not without flaws, but it is high on memorability with a number of inviting heroic vistas and lines of charm. But 17 feels as if you've been dropped into a rabbit hole and ended up at Mosholu in the Bronx... Dead flat and dead straight, this hallway is framed on the left by 10 old trees staggered almost every 30 yards in the rough, while the 90 foot high poles of the OB range nets and 10 more trees guard almost the whole length of the right...the largest of these also intrudes into the edge of the fairway some 250 yards down...just in case you thought you got away with a straight ball. 

18. Dunwoodie GC - 155 yards - With the exception of Hudson National's 8th and the Nicklaus renovation of St. Andrews since-1897 property, I avoided culling from any but a Golden Age "classic" Westchester course/hole...I truly wanted holes that stunk for Gene Sarazen and our fore-running slashers of the 20s as well as the great multitudes since til today.  Until now I also avoided ripping from any of Westchester's 5 classic era munis (Sprain Lake, Maple Moor, Saxon Woods, Mohansic and Dunwoodie - the latter being the oldest property/course of the five)...Until now.  This deserves inclusion because it is just about the most boring afterthought hole ever made.  I've never been able to determine the first architectural provenance of the Dunwoodie course property which dates to 1904 as a rather-swank Broadway/theater-folk club created to escape what was getting to be a crowded Van Cortlandt Park course. However, for its first 50 years, the 18th was the longest (600 yds) of a lengthy up and back closing stretch of 16 (420) and 17 (515) in the center of the property. When the course was taken over by the county in the mid 1950s, a new clubhouse facility and driving range caused rippling amendments to the route of the back nine, causing the old 18th to be divided into two holes...a 420 yard 17th and this one, which covers the last 160 modestly downhill yards of the old 18th's approach... Almost flat, with a broad nearly featureless green and two banal framing bunkers, there are literally short game areas with more shot interest than this one which feels like a bean bag toss-cum-chip chip shot. During a 1993 summer heatwave, in hardpan conditions (Dunwoodie's seemingly natural muni state) I made a 3 putt par...you get the picture.

[Tom_Doak]

VK: Unless the course has changed, I swear the downhill par 5 at St Andrews is the 11th ... which made my 18 worst holes in the world list twenty years ago. I was there for the GOLF Magazine-sponsored centennial, and after finishing that hole, Hall of Famer Carol Mann looked back and exclaimed to no one in particular, "That has got to be the worst hole I have ever seen in my life."  So we are not alone.

[Peter Pallotta]

Finally a worthy alternative to the Doak Scale - the VKB Scale. If on the 18th you're using an old Pinnacle the course is (in the old Doak formula) a "2"; if you've teed-up a Slazenger 384, it's a "1"; and if you're down to an orange Top Flite (with sans-serif font) the course should never have been built. Meanwhile, if you've got the same Titleist ProV1x that you started with, you're playing Sand Hills or a Donald Ross gem. Easy-peasy, congratulations Veezy!

[V. Kmetz]

VK: Unless the course has changed, I swear the downhill par 5 at St Andrews is the 11th ... which made my 18 worst holes in the world list twenty years ago. I was there for the GOLF Magazine-sponsored centennial, and after finishing that hole, Hall of Famer Carol Mann looked back and exclaimed to no one in particular, "That has got to be the worst hole I have ever seen in my life."  So we are not alone.

I think we are both right and the physical route has changed, even since JN's original, significant re-do in 1979-80 and since any centennial year you were referencing (1988 {the club} or 1997 {this site's 100th year})...but currently the 9th (which could have easily made the list) is a dead straight mountain climb along the entrance drive...the 10th is a drop shot par 3 back down that hill...then you make an intense 100 foot/100 yard serpentine cart path climb to the 11th tee, which is a 400 yard par 4 played 30 more feet uphill...then you're on the 12th tee with the Thruway below you 150 feet below to the right.


cheers  vk

[SPDB]

VK - Great call with the 14th at BGTC, for which we can thank Ken Dye (although, in his defense, what he replaced was equally banal). My biggest complaint with the hole is the steep 5 foot berm that rings the back half of the green and which rises just off the fringe. It will often be that you're playing a long iron into the elevated green. With little opportunity to play a high soft-landing shot, the ball will carom through the green and come to rest in the steep berm, extraction from which is very difficult. Awful design. 

[V. Kmetz]

I'm appreciative that someone else choruses how poor this green complex is for the shot(s) sequence that gets you there... for an uphill hole that for 95% of play is not approached with an iron, but a hy-wood+, the green should be venturesome...that dip and the green contouring, hazard presntation should invite and receive your attempt, and the pursuit of 4 (par) should not be rendered unlikely just because you fail to achieve the shot fully...


In the end that is a defining characteristic of unsatisfying and/or poor, often penal architecture...the pursuit to draw on 4 and recovery of your fortunes are over if you fail to execute any shot in sequence.


I think the very first maxim I understood about GCA was that it is no great trick to make something hard; I can make a 25 yard hole into my garbage can (a much bigger hole diameter, no?) at the end of my driveway that you either make 1 or 100...I can make up an 18 hole course of such holes that will cost little in property and construction, absolutely use natural features in design, not need irrigation and will cost virtually nothing to maintain or operate, yet somehow I do not think my Barrel Reserve will be celebrated or much played.


cheers  vk

[Eric LeFante]

VK, I really like these two threads, but I disagree with your Fenway pick. I like the 11th hole. Uphill par 3s are not that common so I enjoy playing them for variety. The false front keeps balls off the green that are not solidly struck. The green does run back to front but it's not close to the most sloped or most severe on the course.




https://www.fenwaygolfclub.com/course-photos

[V. Kmetz]

EL,


Your defense of "variety" is reasonable, though I surmise the absence of steeply uphill one-shot holes is owing to a general disdain for not seeing the ball's landing, roll or finish on such holes... an enduring, valid critique of one-shot hole design. If an uphill of this severe nature (35 feet in 200 yards) is tolerated, it is because it is a short or mid-iron.


I resist the part about the false front and "solidly struck"...that smacks of equating mere difficulty for an already difficult task.


I'll also defer to your lower ranking of the green contours...but where does it rank... top 3, top 6? top 9?


I'd also ask what would change if this were presented bunkerless with a broader, bigger green...would the hole be less enjoyable or more for you...or for all the players who play it?


Lastly, this picture is ironically part of the conceptualizing/critiquing problem. If that were indeed the view from the tee, this might be an attractive hole...but that view is from a drone camera hovering some 30-40 feet in the air, some 15 or 20 yards in front of the white tee...the hole doesn't look like that when you play it, the player never sees this view, never sees that false front, those last two right bunkers, the orientation of the green margins to play. 


I feel there's no strategy in this shot, no lattitude for a blind hit, no reward for one clever play over another, only bashing a hy-wood/3-iron up at the top 3rd of a flag...Tillie designed it, Hanse restores it, it's got to be good


cheers  vk

[Eric LeFante]

VK,


I think having the green open on the right with no bunkers is a good suggestion. I think if the bunker on the left wasn't there and it was short grass, the ball would roll 40 yards down the hill and close to OB.


I think top 6 most severely sloped is fair.


I don't think golf course architecture should always be fair (i.e. long holes have big flat greens, short holes have small and/or undulating greens). I like the hole because one gets enormous satisfaction out of hitting this green. You need to hit a great shot to hit this green. If the green were bigger and were easier to hit, it certainly would help my score, but it wouldn't increase my enjoyment of the hole because I wouldn't get the same satisfaction from hitting a bigger green.

I don't think there is usually a lot of strategy involved with a par 3 with a medium to small sized green. I'm thinking about the 8 par 3s at Winged Foot and there isn't a ton of strategy with them. We all know Billy Casper laid up on 3 West, but most of them are hit a great shot or else. [size=78%]

[/size]I personally really like 11 at Fenway. I could see why you don't. On a 10 point scale, I think it's reasonable for someone to think this is a little above a 5 and for someone to think its a little below a 5; I just don't think it's anywhere near a 1 or 2.

[V. Kmetz]

VK,

I think having the green open on the right with no bunkers is a good suggestion. I think if the bunker on the left wasn't there and it was short grass, the ball would roll 40 yards down the hill and close to OB. Doesn't that set some red light blinking about the routing of the hole...in that corner... that a bunker is not an obstacle or operate as a hazard, but as a relief because you might go bounding away?

I think top 6 most severely sloped is fair.  Agreed; I overstated the case in the original post

I don't think golf course architecture should always be fair (i.e. long holes have big flat greens, short holes have small and/or undulating greens).  Nor do I, but solvable and dynamic beyond one shot.


I like the hole because one gets enormous satisfaction out of hitting this green. You need to hit a great shot to hit this green. If the green were bigger and were easier to hit, it certainly would help my score, but it wouldn't increase my enjoyment of the hole because I wouldn't get the same satisfaction from hitting a bigger green. I think you're mixtaking a proportion of larger to easier to hit with the other shots after that tee shot. If that hole were bunkerless, the green broader and more "Tillie-contoured" then where the pin is would matter more, where you miss would matter more, WHERE on the green your satisfying hit ended up matters more and the provoking pursuit is kept to the hole-out.

I don't think there is usually a lot of strategy involved with a par 3 with a medium to small sized green. I'm thinking about the 8 par 3s at Winged Foot and there isn't a ton of strategy with them. We all know Billy Casper laid up on 3 West, but most of them are hit a great shot or else. [size=78%] God no! On each course they play in 3 directions of the compass; of the 8 total, two play N, two play E, three play S, one plays W...on each course the groupings are played with short, mid, long irons and hy-woods... there isn't a better collection of 4 or 8 on any property.

You've already hi-lighted 3W in one manner but

#7 West puts precise distance judgement on your head, into the prevailing wind, uphill with a mid/short iron in most player's hand.
#10's depth and tapered margins (and pleasing/terrifying visual) invite the player to play past forward pins and short of back ones or risk wicked putts and impossible up and downs...
13W is perhaps a finer long 3 than #3...played (like #7) into the prevailing wind, you can try flighting a lower running ball into the green, but it must be left center or it will not hold the contour... you can try flying it all the way, but there you can't miss to the sides at any Winged Foot hole...the putting green is a marvel of Golden Age GCA.
The Hanse resto-vations on #3E and 6E are a revelation...
13 and 17 are the best two Par 3s in the world on any nine...and while 13 is a rough boat if you miss (a 140 - 150 yard shot), 17 may be the most rewarding hole to play and NOT hit the green of any hole in America.

[/size]I personally really like 11 at Fenway. I could see why you don't. On a 10 point scale, I think it's reasonable for someone to think this is a little above a 5 and for someone to think its a little below a 5; I just don't think it's anywhere near a 1 or 2.

.  What is a worse hole at Fenway?

Fun to engage...

cheers   vk

[MCirba]

Nice architectural discussion guys. 


Thanks.

[Malcolm Mckinnon]

What hole could be worse than the 14th at Scarsdale?


Gotta love a blind second shot downhill on a long par 4 dogleg. Or am I just inept? As a single digit handicapper and numerous rounds clocked there I have never espied a green as I set up for my second shot approach. No aiming stick either.


Always thought the 16th was a bit of a yawner but have not seen it in ten years at least.

[Eric LeFante]

VK,


Your analysis of the 8 par 3s at Winged Foot is wonderful. A simpler mind would say just hit the green or else. You are a much better writer than me and I am certain that you could make 11 at Fenway sound really good if you wanted to!


At Fenway I think 16 and 17 are not as good or interesting to play as 11. I think those two holes are not unique and I’ve seen holes similar to those at other courses. I don’t think they are bad holes. 11 is a very unique hole.


I think architects use bunkers to keep balls from going in a worse place quite often.

[V. Kmetz]

What hole could be worse than the 14th at Scarsdale?


Gotta love a blind second shot downhill on a long par 4 dogleg. Or am I just inept? As a single digit handicapper and numerous rounds clocked there I have never espied a green as I set up for my second shot approach. No aiming stick either.


Always thought the 16th was a bit of a yawner but have not seen it in ten years at least.

14 Scarsdale was in the running...no doubt... there were three courses (Scarsdale, Bedford, Mt. Kisco) that had multiple holes wherein the problem was not their level of disdain, but distribution to a Worstchester hole number... Mt. Kisco didn't end up having any - and few enjoy that course. 16 IS a bit of a yawner...that's part of it too.


cheers   vk

[Ian Andrew]

I'm left to wonder on whether there is a different evaluation criteria between player and architect on holes like the 11th at Fenway.
It happens to be my favourite after the 15th (which is ridiculously clever).


I like uphill threes and this one reminds me of Essex's 11th in the way it tackles the rise.
It's an outstanding example of how to build a great uphill three.


It's funny, I'm not as enamoured with the well-loved drop shot three as most are.

[V. Kmetz]

I'm left to wonder on whether there is a different evaluation criteria between player and architect on holes like the 11th at Fenway.
What elements of the architect's eval would you say are different here that consider something else on this example?
It happens to be my favourite after the 15th (which is ridiculously clever). No way! I'm calling BS on this. There's no way anyone (except someone who perhaps aced the hole) could find this 2nd most appealing there, I mean I am bored, and irriated by the middle of this course (7-12), but for heaven's sake...the stately skyline 2nd? the classic Tillie 3rd? the wild amusing 4th? The strong fair and handsome 5th...and an honest, frank and worthy long par 3 - the 6th? Even the arcane 1st and majestic 13th have more to offer...even if you LOVE the 11th....C'mon !!

I like uphill threes and this one reminds me of Essex's 11th in the way it tackles the rise. I can't remember if I've ever visited; I don't think so.
It's an outstanding example of how to build a great uphill three. How so? If you have the opportunity, I'd be interested in your explanation of that

It's funny, I'm not as enamoured with the well-loved drop shot three as most are. I don't think as many as you think are...I'm ambivalent about them until I actually see and experience the hole, as you know if you read the OP threads.

cheers  vk