I grew up 30 minutes from HCC and played it several times. Kris is absolutely correct about the old #10 - the hole they built to replace it, #11, is a huge blemish on what is otherwise a really neat, fun golf course. Topography-wise, it is much more similar to some of the courses in the North and South Carolina Piedmont areas than the "mountain" Donald Ross courses in WNC such as Highlands, Biltmore Forest, or even the Muni in Asheville.
A couple of things that I noticed at HCC even before I had any interest in golf architecture:
- Possibly the most interesting green complex in the entirety of WNC resides at HCC. What I believe is the 8th green (been 15 years since I've been there) is a short downhill Par-4 to a green that is situated on top of a small hillock that is a spur of a larger hill behind it. The hillock juts-out at a sharp angle to the line of play and is also approximately 6-10 feet above the fairway-with a couple bunkers cut underneath the green surface into the side of the hillock. It resembles a rocky island rising up out of the fairway.
- The 18th fairway, and the one immediately adjacent to it (#16?) always gave me the impression of being in the middle of two gigantic swells in the ocean - to the point of not even being able to see the entire green from about 180 years away - between the swells. Never a flat lie in either fairway, particularly #18!!
- #17 is a dead-uphill, tough finishing hole that plays considerably longer than the listed 200 years.
- Perhaps Kris has come across better information, but I was told early on that, while the course was certainly designed by Donald Ross, he did it over a topo-map, and never actually made a site visit. It was built to Ross's plans by a local crew - which makes the aforementioned #8 all the more intriguing, in my mind.
- When I was growing up and just becoming aware of golf (late 70's-80's), Hendersonville was considered perhaps the most "clubby" of the private facilities in the Asheville area - meaning it was the center of social life for it's member families and a huge social institution for the town's professionals and business owners. Biltmore Forest was very WASPY and I think, even though Asheville has never been a very religiously-divided city, the CC of Asheville was home to both the city's Jewish golfers AND the professionals in town who did not possess the DNA to get into Biltmore Forest.
- Adam is right, no huge difference in Summertime temps...but in WINTER Hendersonville is usually 5-10 degrees warmer than my hometown of Canton, 40 miles to the West.
- Hendersonville CC at one time, I think, had 100% Poa greens.
- I don't remember which year they did it - but HCC was the first golf course in WNC to go wall-to-wall Bermuda Grass.
- To my knowledge, HCC was (and remains) the only facility in WNC that had a separate building for the golf shop, like many of the old-money clubs like Yeamans Hall, Camargo, Chicago, SLCC...etc...