Woke up at 3 am this morning to hear rain pelting the tin roof of my Chrome Lake lodge. Withthe forecast calling for morning showers and my tee time at 8:25 on Bandon Dunes I started thinking if I should even bother playing a practice round. It rained hard until between 6:30 and 7:00 but the then the rain stopped and the sun came out all day - totally opposite of the forecast for the day.
I felt Bandon Dunes was noticeably easier than Bandon Trails. The fairways are absolutely huge and even though you may have a blind shot or bad angle at times I think for good players that makes for relatively easy golf. Put me on a course where I don't feel pressure on the tee and I'm going to play pretty well. I didn't keep score and didn't read many of my putts, but I probably somehwere between -2 and +2 pretty easily. While playing BT I always knew what hole we were on but at BD I lost track of what hole we were on and how many we had played. I don't know what that says about the courses.
1 (386 yards) - Again pretty benign starting hole. Getting to a back left pine placement would be almost impossible. Big green that is relatively flat gets you into the round comfortably. Driver and a little 7 iron for me.
2 (189 yards) - Make sure you take enough club and the hole isn't too difficult. If you forget you have a big backboard at the back of the green (and even the middle ridge) and try to get too cute to a front pin your ball rolls all the way back down the hill. Not a good spot to be. 4 iron to 15 feet and made the putt.
3 (543 yards) - Just your average par 5. Driver, 5 iron, sand wedge to 8 feet = birdie.
4 (443 yards) - I don't remember much about this hole.
5 (428 yards) - Hit drive down the left and had 8 iron to a front pin. While the yardage says the left side presents a better angle to the green I would play to the right side so I could use the left side by the green as bank for missed shot. Right of the green is pretty nasty.
6 (178 yards) - Pin was in the back and hit 4 iron to about 15-18 feet. It's a hole that you just have to hit a good shot. Missing the green will probably mean bogey.
7 (411 yards) - Very interesting green. Lots of backboards/slopes to feed balls. If pin is center or right the left side of the fairway is probably best. If the pin is left I would to be on the right side of the fairway and use the slopes in the green to feed the ball to the left.
8 (385 yards) - Driver sand wedge to 5 feet = birdie. Unless the pin is middle left or back there is not much to this hole.
9 (585 yards) - Another par 5 that justs a driver, lay up, wedge.
10 (383 yards) - This is the first tee shot that really grabbed my attention. We had a slight breeze in our face. It was 244 to carry the last central bunker - right on the border of how far I can carry it. I cleared it by 5-7 yards, but after the roll I had a totally blind shot. I'll probably play left of the bunker so I can see the green in the tourney.
11 (452 yards) - Perhaps the toughest hole on the course. Decent drive left me a 5 iron to a front pin. This looked to be a very tough green to hit. Missing right was dead.
12 (199 yards) - Pin was kind of back right today. I hit my sweetest shot of the day here - a knock down four iron that landed on the front of the green and rolled out to 15-20 feet. I think that one even impressed Kevin Marsh (champion from 2005) who I played with today. Missing this green results in a very tough up and down.
13 (553 yards) - Same thing as the other par 5s for me.
14 (390 yards) - I played down the right side of the fairway coming up about 10 yards short/right of the second central bunker. Ideally I would have played right at the first central bunker but didn't feel comfortable carrying it into the wind. Really good central bunker placement on this hole and is a perfect example of what makes link golf so much better than the American style of bunker right/bunker left.
15 (131 yards) - A front pin seemed the easiest as you could use the hillside to the left to feed your shot onto the green.
16 (363 yards) - Hit my drive just left of the ridge bisecting the fairway and had 120 yards to the green. Seemed like a pretty easy hole.
17 (389 yards) - What a green. Felt like something I would see at TOC or Prestwick. Hole didn't seem too tough - 3 wood, 9 iron to a front pin.
18 (558 yards) - This was the first par 5 in two days where I tried to go for the green. While I'm not long, this is rare for me. Usually there is at least 1, maybe 2 par 5s on every course that I can get home in two. But most of the par 5s on these courses seem to leave 260-300 yards away. So, I''m laying up on almost all of them.
I thought the par 5s were a little repetitive at BD. You are never challenged on the tee shot and I'm not long enough to reach any of the greens in two and the layups seemed pretty easy.
While the par 3s played differently they seemed repetitive in that if you missed the green you probably would get up and down. These holes are the key to a good round on this course. Get through them unscathed and I would expect to shoot par or better.
So after playing both courses I thought BT was better and more interesting. More variety in the holes, more challenging off the tee, more difficult to hit it close. (The biggest negative about BT to me was all the large false fronts. I would like to have seen more greens sited as thought the fairway just continued.)
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be pretty good with winds in the 10-15 mph range. I tee off at 1 pm on #11 at BT. Sunday's forecast is brutal - periods of heavy rain with winds in the 20-40 mph range. After talking to a number of players, the consensus was that BT was tougher and it would be better to play it on day 1 when there was less wind.