Last weekend a buddy from Pensacola and I flew to Atlanta, drove to Athens and Greenville SC, played three very solid Southern golf courses, and flew home. A long weekend of heat and humidity which typifies Southern golf in the summer time. No wonder the US Open isn't often played in the South, unless you consider Tulsa OK the South.
Friday we played a very enjoyable round at Athens CC in Athens, GA, a solid Donald Ross course built in 1925, apparently without a lot of supervision but based on an outstanding routing. The course revolves around a 45 acre lake; Ross took pains to require only two shots across the lake, and neither over 170 yards. The routing takes you all around the course with constant reversing of direction. Somehow the super is maintaining an excellent set of bent grass greens. The conditions were excellent, somewhere between lush and firm. Apparently the college kids are chewing up the course in the Southern Intercollegiate, so some new back tees can be seen in a few places. I had last played the course in 1965, so the tree count was much higher than my previous visit.
Bob Crosby was nice enough to play with us in a three ball, Mike Young being incapacitated with a bum knee which was scoped this Monday.
Saturday morning we drove to Hartwell Georgia, just south of the South Carolina border and east of I-85, where we played another solid Southern course on another hot and sticky day. Cateechee Golf Club is a 1998 Mike Young design, and is set in a 475 acre site of rolling terrain and some extreme elevation changes. Like many good designs, this one looks intimidating and certainly can be tough if you don't play patiently and hit for the middle of the greens. There are some very tricky pin placements which can lead to short siding if you get carried away with your possible accuracy! The most exciting hole on the course is the 428 yd #10 (we played from the second tees, the tips on this hole were back there at 462!). The tee shot is hit toward a horizon fairway, nothing visible until you get to the ball and discover a severe drop off into a chasm which must be carried, hopefully on the 2nd shot, over a pair of ponds at the bottom. The lay up area is at the bottom of a slope just before the drop off; a gas pipeline required the fairway to be held at that elevation. The result is a dramatic hole to say the least.
My favorite hole was the brawny par 5 #17, 616 yards, with a hollow to the right to catch pushed tee shots (like mine), cross bunkers to catch the underhit 2nd shot (I laid up to 180), and a fairly large green to which I nailed a 4 iron to 6'.
Another interesting hole is the very short (278 yds from our tee, 305 from the tips) par 4 #15, which appears to have a split fairway. However, the central and lower area which looks like a fairway is actually fairly short rough. The best play is to the actual fairway up to the right, and then a pitch down the length of the green.
Cateechee is filled with interesting challenges like that, and is fun to play.
Sunday we finished off the sweat fest at Musgrove Mill outside Greenville SC. Again, this is a strong course in the South. Daryl Boe posted some photos on an earlier thread and I wrote a brief review of this intimidating and demanding course. Like a lot of really good courses, this one will be easier in the future as the route to the hole is not always the short route! The fairways almost always look much narrower from the tee than they are once you are out there in the fairway. Almost every hole had this feature. Most of the par 5's had a "Hell's Half Acre" feature where a good tee shot was required to get in position to carry the hazard / bunkers / rough with the next shot.
All I can say about June golf in the South is, what did we do before carts?
Stay tuned for information about playing both Athens CC and Cateechee at your option before or after the November outing in Cuscowilla. The weather is guaranteed to be cooler!