I had the great pleasure of joining Jack Crisham, Paul Thomas and Dave Schmidt for a round at Ravisloe yesterday – firm conditions and a steady two-club wind. And apart from the wealth of great stories shared after the round, I wanted to share my favorite GCA moment.
The 16th hole is a par four that cards 390 yards from the tips. The tee shot plays slightly downhill across a swale to another rise. If one carries the rise (no more than 200 yards), the land falls down again and then gently back up to a skyline-ish green framed by a large bunker around 50 yards short on the left, and greenside bunkers abutting it on the right. The green is extremely shallow (maybe 15-20 paces?) and cants sharply away from the fairway. The back bank is shaved as a chipping area.
Two of our wind-aided tee balls found the left rough around 75-90 yards from the green, requiring lofted shots over the large bunker. The third arrived in the right side of the fairway (courtesy of a friendly ricochet) at ~150 yards, with a clearer view of the green. And the fourth didn’t happen because of a cell phone misplaced a few holes back
The results? The right fairway shot, a purely struck nine iron, hit toward the middle of the green then promptly ran some 20 yards over. The left rough shots, played with wedges, both cleared the bunker, they landed pathetically short…perhaps influenced by the first shot and fear of also bouncing over the green.
Despite the unimpressive outcomes, all agreed that it was an impressive hole.
While waiting on the next tee, we watched the group of septuagenarians in the group behind us play running shots that cleared the short-left bunker and chased up onto and – importantly – held the shallow green. Our group made two key observations: a)the old guys were playing from further away and b)the old guys knew what they were doing.
But did the old guys, in fact, know what they were doing? Were their running shots products of necessity, i.e., would they have preferred to have shorter clubs in hand but simply lost the distance over time? Or were they products of strategic choice, i.e., did they knowingly play to a distance that would accommodate running shots with longer clubs?
And should I have laid up off the tee and tried to bounce in a mid-iron rather than spin a wedge? Which way did the architect intend for the hole to play? And what decision have others who have played Ravisloe made?
Television commentators these days often note that players sometimes lay back in order to hit full shots with more spin, and sometimes hackers like us do that too. But in this case, perhaps laying three or four clubs back in order to hit with less spin, rather than more, is actually the preferred (and more fun!) shot.