Flynn, Tillinghast, Doak, Ross, Wilson, Macdonald/Raynor. My first of each with the exception of Ross.
Thank you to my hosts, especially concierge Mike "you're going about this all wrong" Sweeney and event planner Dan Taylor. See you all in 2007.
Please note that all of these courses were fantastic. Here is the all-vacation team.
1 - Yale
2 - Rolling Green
3 - Gulph Mills
4 - Merion
5 - Beechtree
6 - Baltimore
7 - Baltimore
8 - Merion
9 - Yale
10 - Gulph Mills
11 - Rolling Green
12 - Rolling Green
13 - Yale
14 - Yale
15 - Merion
16 - Gulph Mills
17 - Merion
18 - Beechtree
Rolling Green
Sunny, low seventies, light breeze. Score: two below trip average
Overall impressions - This routing has a very pure and flowing quality to it. Conditions were firm enough so that my tee ball on number eight bounced over the creek. On several holes I was in a position to easily take four shots from near the green, a condition that was repeated at several other courses on my journey.
Favorite holes
2 - Totally appealing from start to finish. The drive and the approach are inviting, intimidating and beautiful all at the same time.
7 - The ultimate half par. Much has been made of using the ground for one's approach, but they never told me that the ball might keep rolling over a swale in the green and end up very very far away. My favorite hole at Rolling Green.
9 - A slog, but a delightful one. The two bunkers are perfectly placed. If you play around the first, you have to negotiate the other. Plain and simple.
12 - What I found ingenious about this hole was how visually busy the corner of the dogleg is - a creek, a couple of bunkers, a Christmas tree - you just can't take your eyes off of it. It attracted four out of five tee balls from our group.
Baltimore Country Club, East Course
Threatening, winds steady at 20 MPH as the afternoon wore on. Score - two above trip average
Overall impression - Like the fifth taste "umami", this course has a quality that I find very hard to put into words. It's kind of raw and essential. This course had the most natural look and feel of the week. I also think it was the most difficult as well as the most familiar.
Favorite holes
6 - The Barn Hole. Delicious risk and reward on every shot. How much barn to cut off, if any, whether to go for the difficult and green or not on the panoramic second, and finally, how deep do you dare go into the green?
7 - A confusing blind tee shot followed by a hair-rasing approach to a steep two-tiered green with deadly bunkers behind. This green is shaped like a "Q" - it literally sticks its tounge out at you. My Five Farms Favorite.
10 - The Japanese Tea Garden hole. An interesting tee shot where you can gamble on a turbo boost at the risk of the ball above your feet in the rough. Gorgeous green that lulls you into a bogus serenity.
14 - Slightly uphill tee shot between two bunkers - the final two hundred yards are then steeply down and steeply back up to an extremely tilted green. In your face all the way.
Beechtree
Sunny, cool on the first tee, perfect thereafter. Score - ten below trip average.
Overall impressions - A gentle and easy respite from the rigors of the week. The fairways here are enormous and while there are certainly preferred lines of play, there is just something about such targets that encourages a freewheeling swing. The placement of the bunkers was very good as were the potato chip greens. There was a bit of a pedestrian cartball feel to this course - how about a bench or two? Next time I will play from the tippy tips, as the fairways were the firmest of the week, giving forty yards of roll at a time.
Favorite holes
3 - Plain and simple, but so well done. A short hole that screams from left to right, with bunkers everywhere down the right hand side.
5 - I'm getting tired, time to quote Ran Morrissett - "The approach shot typifies the fun of golf at Beechtree as the golfer may well elect to invent a low running approach from 150 yards, let it take the right to left fairway slope, and chase onto the green, which is angled to receive a shot from its high side. "
8 - I have never seen fairway bunkering like this - the second shot must challenge the bunkers on the left that eat into the fairway, but a too-good challenge will kick down and right towards another series of bunkers. Insidious, and again, very simple.
18 - With the ball bouncing even uphill, this hole was eminently reachable with a lite breeze behind. The green complex is tremendous, with an inviting run-up area, but when your ball gets onto the green it runs all over the damn place. A thoughtful and good-looking finisher, my favorite hole on the course.
Gulph Mills
Sunny, wind 10 MPH and gusting. Score - three above trip average
Overall impressions - For some reason I had thought that this was going to be a normal and modest Donald Ross course. Wrong. This course is outrageous, just a couple of notches behind Yale in the excitement category. Many greens have intense countouring, and the variety of contouring is astounding.
Favorite holes
3 - Shatters the silly notion that a long par four should have an inviting green. One tees off the high point of the property towards a creek that crosses on the diagonal, in play down the right hand side. The approach is uphill to a wicked double plateau, the right side of which is more of a knob than a plateau.
10 - The "kitchen sink" hole. Of all the holes I played, this one threw the most at me. The fairway, located fifty feet below the tee, has reverse camber, there is a creek in front of the green, and the green has three tiers with intense contours going every which way. My favorite hole on this course.
12 - An inviting drive downhill (I think there was a turbo area) makes this hole quite reachable, but the target is extremely narrow, bunkered, and contoured, difficult from 100 yards as well as 250.
16 - Gorgeous tee shot with willow trees on the outside of the dogleg, and then back uphill to another strongly contoured and defended green. Unusually satisfying.
Merion, East Course
Sunny, gentle breezes. Score - nine above trip average
Overall impressions - A ninja assassin. Merion demands and rewards shotmaking while brutally punishing indifference like no course I have ever seen. The course is totally bewildering to the first time visitor. Not until your chip/putt runs screaming away from the hole do you realize what a silly and lame approach you hit. My only quibbles are the too-steep fifth green and a slight letdown on the back nine after the A++ near-perfect front.
Favorite holes
3 - How easy it was for 3/4 or perhaps even all of our group to hit towards the left pin, miss the green left, and flail about helplessly from there. A tremendous green.
4 - As I was planning this trip, I was haunted by the photos of the fourth green. It did not disappoint. Part sunflower, part dartboard, it is the most beautiful target I have ever hit to.
8 - This was my favorite hole of the week. The left hand bunker and the wrong line beckon from the tee. A good drive ends up on a downslope that is steep enough to wreak havoc but gentle enough so that everyone has a chance. And there lies the green, cut abruptly into the hillside with the mother of all bunkers obscuring it. Is there anything like it anywhere else in the world? The hole just comes to a screeching halt in the middle of a hill. A drive and a pitch indeed . . .
15 - The hole where I was most on full red alert. Squeeze the tee ball between the out of bounds and the bunkers. Next, the steep terrain, crazy green and in your face bunker make the approach totally unappetizing. A nasty hole in every regard.
17 - The "kitchen sink" of par threes. Looks OK from the tee, stunning from the mini-fairway and beyond. The only part of the quarry that really captivated me. And there you are, down in a horrid abandoned quarry, with this perfect combination of swale, bunkers, rough, and fairway. I'm assuming that noone ever hits this green, making the dozens of potential recovery options that more appealing.
Yale
Sunny, steady light wind. Score - neither above nor below the trip average.
Overall impressions - Extreme in the extreme. Audacious, unthinkable in places. My big question - surely it is exciting to play to a cape green guarded by a twenty-foot bunker, but is it exciting or interesting to recover from down there? In any event, this course has to be seen to be believed.
Favorite holes
1 - Play ball! The turbo fairway and gathering green say "welcome", but both bunkers have great magnetism. This hole is all things to all golfers and clearly the finest opener I have played.
8 - Yale on steriods. A possibly blind approach to a green that has twenty foot bunkers on both sides. The hole is so vast and insidious that it is entirely possible to play it and never see the left hand bunker. That's right, an invisible twenty-foot deep bunker. My favorite hole at Yale.
9 - This hole looks like a gigantic moth from the tee. The swale cannot be described in words or pictures.
14 - This was the most beautiful hole I played all week. The fairway flows from left to right just so, horizontally and vertically, and the green is just about perfectly symmetrical in both dimensions, like a truncated cone or pyramid. The ultimate MacRaynor marriage of all-natural fairway and industrial green.