Wintonbury Hills—adding length?

[Dan_Callahan]

I played Wintonbury Hills on Monday, and the course remains in spectacular shape. Even with the constant rain of the last month, the fairways were dry (with the exception of 14 and 15).

A fair amount of work was underway, and it looks like they are lengthening the tee boxes on a few holes. Specifically, there was extensive digging and dirt on 3, 9 and 12 (I think). Furthermore, I thought I heard talk about lengthening the 6th.

Anyone have any more info? While I love the course, I do think the addition of a few hundred extra yards might really help increase the challenge from tee to green, so I'm hoping that is what's going on.

[Chris Pike]

I don't know if the course is being lengthened (I'm sure Brad Klein can speak to that), but I'm not sure you would get much yardage by lengthening the par 3's, which are what holes #3, #9, and #12 are.  I've played the course several times and I know that hole #3 had a tee box sharing issue with #6, so they are probably trying to at least remedy this.      

[Brad Klein]

Excuse me while I brush the dust off my pants. Was just out there again, preparing for Tim Liddy's visit next Thursday. Laid out the little red construction flags and sent digitals to Liddy who is monitoring what shaper Phil Coles (he did the golf course in 2002-2003) is working on.

Basically, adding width to the par-3 tees, and in the process sneaking in about 80 more yards to get it to 6,710, par-70. Nothing more.

Changes as follows:

3rd hole, 162-yard par-3, adding 3,000 sq. ft. to the tee w/o changing length, and enabling the shared tee with hole 6 to get pushed back about 25 yards so that it plays 420 yards.

6th tee - see above, going from 395 to 420.

7th hole, downhill par-3, currently 222 from back, will go to 250 as we expand tee behind and put more intemediary tees so that effective teeing ground is about 2x. Shot is to largest green on course, and whole right side and approach are open, so from back tees it is still readily manageable.

9th hole, par-3, going from about 165 to 190 as we add about 1,800 square feet of teeing ground behind and to right.

Theory here is you can't have to much teeing area on par-3 and we had too little.

12th hole, 167 yards, doubling teeing area to the right with no change of yardage.

Superintendent Greg Dubois is doing an amazing job. We'll do almost 900 rounds this week, everyone else in town is slow if not virtually closed, and the work is proceeding w/o interruption of play.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Brad Klein,

I'd agree with you with respect to teeing areas on par 3's, but why the vertical expansion rather than a horizontal expansion ?

250 and 190 are tour sized par 3's.

[Brad Klein]

Pat, very good question. You really need to come out to play Wintonbury and see it for yourself. I'd be happy to arrange for you to pay (as I do)!

7th hole, 222-yards, downhill, is unique at WHGC because the tees are benched in along a slope, with the sixth green on the high right side of the tees and wetlands on the left. So there's no width to be had, and it has to be arrayed in vertical fashion (you know what I mean) rather than in linear fashion. It fits, but it does make for an unusally long hole. But it's downhill 20 feet and the apparent wetlands crossing is not really a factor, with tons of room short and right to play safe

All I can say is that right now from the back tees on a normal day I hit the following clubs:

3rd hole - 8 iron (slightly downhill)
7th hole - 4-wood to 2-rescue (downhill)
9th hole - 7-8 iron
12th hole - 8 iron (downhill)
17th hole - 7-wood/2-rescue

So adding a total of 80 yards won't mean the end of the world, there will still be two short par-3s.

Mind you, it's not Liddy's idea to lengthen the course, he just wanted to widen the tees, but the management company likes the length, not that it will make the course appreciably harder. More for the scorecard show - but that's how some golf pros think, I guess.

[Kelly Blake Moran]

Mind you, it's not Liddy's idea to lengthen the course, he just wanted to widen the tees, but the management company likes the length, not that it will make the course appreciably harder. More for the scorecard show - but that's how some golf pros think, I guess.

But who owns the course, the town or the management company???

[Brad Klein]

KBM,

town owns it, we pay the Billy Casper Mgt. Co. to run it. We did need newly expanded tees, and they just wanted the yardage. It hardly matters, as long as we keep our safety margins.

Besides, they have a lot more wisdom when it comes to architecture than Pete Dye and Tim Liddy (where's that happy face when I need it?)

[Kelly Blake Moran]

KBM,

town owns it, we pay the Billy Casper Mgt. Co. to run it. We did need newly expanded tees, and they just wanted the yardage. It hardly matters, as long as we keep our safety margins.

Besides, they have a lot more wisdom when it comes to architecture than Pete Dye and Tim Liddy (where's that happy face when I need it?)

 

[Jim Sweeney]

Having played the course last spring, I agree with Brad that the added length will not appreciably change WH's difficulty- no chanke in course rating and maybe an insignificant 3 points on the slope rating. My only thought is that on hole #6, stretching the back tee  25 yards eliminates the concern over the central fairway bunker for all except extremely long hitters. Although I do not belong in the catagory of long hitter, I had to think about left/right or lay up on that tee shot, and the choice would have changed with the hole location. I will not have that decision to make from the new back tee.

The added length on #7 is, as Brad implied, probably unneccessary but does no harm. It will, in the summer south/southwest wind cause many (including yours truly) to select the driver if the green is my objective.

The ninth green is one of the more challenging on the course from the prospective of the approach: it is small and well bunkered in the right front. However, a four, five or six iron shot here should be well within the expert player's ability, especially since he is guaranteed a perfect lie!

I hope and expect to visit WH again next Srping on my annual raod trip from Cincinnati to Boston.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Brad Klein,

Thanks for the explanation.

You've given me another reason to hope for an early spring.

I do get to Connecticut occassionally and have Shuttle Meadow, Wintonbury and the CC of Fairfield on my wish list.

[Dan_Callahan]

I will wait to see how the new length impacts the shots, but I've got to believe it will make the 6th and 7th appreciably more difficult. There is a huge difference between 220 and 250 on a par 3. One is an iron, the other a wood on a hole that has water down the left and over the back of the green. I will probably aim short right as Brad mentioned and then try to get up and down.

As for the 6th, I typically have a wedge into that green. Moving the tees back might make the tee shot easier by taking the center bunker out of play (it is already one of the easier tee shots on the course, so not much is lost), but the approach will be a nightmare (in a good way!). That green is brutal. Right is dead, and left funnels off into a chipping area. There is very little landing area to attack a front hole location, especially when a controlled wedge is replaced with an 8- or 7-iron.

I think the 12th might play much harder as well. There is a fallaway front to that green. I hit a 9-iron on most days (depending on the wind), and try to take it as high as I can so I can get the ball to stop. If slightly longer, I would probably be hitting an 8- or 7-iron. It will be very hard to hold the front of the green with the correspondingly lower trajectory.

I would say that 70% of the difficulty at Wintonbury is in the greens, which I find very difficult to hold. Forcing me to hit a longer iron into them—even if only a one or two club difference—will certainly force me to play a more creative game, perhaps bouncing some balls in (very few, if any, of the greens have bunkers fronting them). I'm not saying the management company knows more than Dye or Liddy, but sometimes adjustments to the original design are beneficial after the folks running the show have had the opportunity to see how the course plays—i.e., off the sketch pad and into the dirt.

[Brad Klein]

Dan, the 12th hole won't change in distance, only angle. The 6th hole strategy would change as you suggest, but we would only use that back tee when the hole is downwind and then that mid-fairway bunker is reachable. Besides, I doubt it really matters because . . .

 . . . this is all b.s. They'll have the back tees, be able to boast on the Website of 6,7000 yards, and rarely if ever use them. They're into designing scorecards, not golf courses. It will have no impact on how 99% of rounds are played and on 99% of days that people turn up to play.

The back tees are for show. The widened middle tees are for the everyday golfers.

[Dan_Callahan]

Brad,

Last week, I played in front of a group that included a few of the WH staff (including the GM and assistant pro, I think). As we waited on the 5th tee for the green to clear, the WH group walked into the woods behind and to the left of the tee. It looked like they were talking about adding a new tee box in that vicinity, which would maybe add 20 yards to the hole and change the angle of the drive. Is that something being considered?

[Brad Klein]

Yeah, that was one of wackier ideas that someone came up with. Good news: how many ways can you spell "no?" That idea is dead for the 5th hole.

Adding 20 yards would have been a nightmare and achieve nothing good for the hole. All it does is impede visibility. If we had owned any of the land behind there we would not have made that downhill par-4 so short (333 from the back, though it falls 40 feet tee-to-green) and tempting to "drive" but instead have built a full-length two-shot approach out of it, but we couldn't and won't ever try.

[Tim Bert]

Good to hear they are widening the tee boxes in appropriate spots.

Hopefully this will eliminate the maddening days where the green days are placed 50% at the white boxes and 50% at the blacks (I assume to encourage re-growth after heavy play of the green tees.)  It makes for a day of nothing but half wedges and long approaches.  I played the back nine in those conditions a couple times in 2004 and I don't recall using a full PW through 6-iron the entire time.

I think expanded teeing ground will be a great improvement.  

Now if you could go fill in a few of those ditches at Gillette Ridge, we'll be all set!

[Tim Gavrich]

I know how expensive (relatively) this course was to build, and I also know full well that it's designed for not-so-great golfers, but since we're speculating on a couple possible improvements to an already-excellent course, I have a couple thoughts.

It would be cool to see a couple more Pete Dye-touches in a couple of places, I think.  Perhaps a couple more chipping areas around greens (the 6th is one of my favorite green complexes in CT) could be added at some point.

I would really love to see some railroad ties along the water just off the 14th tee (à la Whistling Straits, Blackwolf Run).  It would turn the overall-best hole on the course (in my opinion) into an unmistakeable Pete Dye hole.  I think it would also give the tee shot a nice boost aesthetically.

As a side note, what's up wth that tiny little shelf in the back of the 11th green?  Do they ever cut a pin back there?  It's mighty small for such a long hole.

Don't get me wrong, I'm always excited to play WH, but these are just some observations by a young, probably quite naïve golf course nut.

[Brad Klein]

Pete Dye railroad ties are nice as a museum piece (so 1960s-70s), but they don't sit well with State DEP, who want an irregular, unmaintained border along the water course.

The back right part of that 11th green is a source of some  grief, quite agree with you, Tim. The shaper snuck it in there one day, and instead of waiting for approval went ahead and put the sand mix in the green well. Liddy hates it and wants it out or at least to convert the area to a chipping area back there. Super has pledged never to cut a pin there - it's not been used yet in two years. The original logic was to pick up that back side of the green a little to render the surface partially visible from the fairway below, but the shaper got out of whack and then wanted to rush things along and before long it was too late. It's weird, but it'll never be used. Kind of a harmless error. If that's our worst blemish, good.

[Jonathan Cummings]

Klein has been pumpin iron - the added length is necessary to take the wedge out of his hands for those approaches.  

jaycee