Grade: B
Slope: 139 Cost: $25 w/cart weekday
[ I didn’t really see a driving-range here, the website only mentions a putting-green ]
…wasn’t the greatest *looking* course, but it plays well, there are only a few houses in sight from the course, and it is quite a challenge of a course. The course has good elevation, the fairways are relatively narrow, the holes long but not too long and there’s enough in the way of elevated greens so that you really don’t have a lot of space to hide in when hitting shots way off the fairway-line and missing greens. Plus the teeboxes, greens and fairways are in decent shape.
It’s cheap, definitely a laid-back course, I don’t even think they require collared shirts here, and except for the traffic-noise from the main road that drives by the #2 fairway, a pretty quiet and calm place to play golf. Almost everything that I could reasonably have asked for and it would have been that much better if it had been another quarter-mile from the main road. So it’s not as appealing to the eye as many golf-courses in the state? It’s also not 3x the price, a nightmare to get on and infested with houses and people strolling through the course like it’s a public park. All so you can do what? The same thing.
It’s not even that short, 6950 yds by the scorecard.
Compared to Tobacco Road GC, which is about 135 miles east of this course just outside of Raleigh, it’s 1/6th the cost to ride 18 holes M-W until June. And TR is only a slope 145 course…and it’s 400 yards shorter from the back tees. Maybe you’re in a club and you can get on one of the many Nicklaus courses in the state, which will give you slope 145-149 from the back tees. And what’s that worth, again?
This course is not the problem.
The problem is having your nose too far in the air.
It just goes to show that you can buy prestige, easily, if you have the money, you can buy the accoutrements of a good golf game.
But you can’t buy a good golf game.
All you can do is hide your weak game behind expensive accoutrements…demanding respect simply because you’re on the course.
Anyone who wants to call themselves a serious golfer should be made to play a course like this at least once a year. And if you don’t break 100 on it, then no, you’re not a serious golfer. Just a pretender, at best an aspirant.
This is a serious course. You can either go chase your 100+ wayward shots around a real course or sit on your ass yelling at a Top 50 Tour-pro for hitting a drive 300 yards into a fairway bunker or 10 yards short of the green at Rae’s Creek.. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there’s no value in watching Tour pros play or that Augusta or whatever course hosts the US Open or the PGA championship is not a real challenge. But there is a huge difference between watching the best players play even a moderately-tough course like Augusta CC, a slope 135 course, and actually trying to play decently on a course that’s even slope 140. And it is a lot easier to NOT play a tough course and just sit on your ass and snipe at people actually playing a tough course.
This course is nowhere near as attractive as a major course. Or even a PGA Tour course. But you probably still can’t play it well.
A lot of people will look at the photos & say “eh, it’s just a scrubby backwoods course” & not even consider playing it. Then go out & waste their money & a bunch of balls playing a more-expensive & attractive course that is STILL better than their game. It is literally almost impossible to beat the real-world golf value of a 7000 yd Slope 140 course that only costs $30 to play 18 holes with a cart. For that I was going to give it a B+. But then I remembered that it doesn’t have a driving-range. It clearly doesn’t *need* one, but it’s still a good thing to have.
Anyway it doesn’t have a driving-range as far as I can tell. If it does, it’s definitely not obvious.
The larger point is that a course might be “boring”. But if you still can’t break 80 on it, then what are you trying to achieve by playing better courses? A parallel question might be: just how easy does a course have to be to break 80 on it? If there are multiple tees, then what are we likely to shoot from each?
I’m just starting to understand that I REALLY don’t care much at all about score.
I understand why, now, even better.
The basic idea of scoring low is a matter of raising the percentage of making a good shot.
It’s like playing beer-pong and bouncing the ball into the cup 60 times in a row.
But never getting to drink a beer along the way.
The alternative is to mix great shots in with ok shots & bad shots.
Or at least, *attempts* at great shots.
I can attempt great shots all day long.
No matter what I actually score, I’ll still have a fun round.
If I try to shoot low just by playing par golf then I will be either stressed-out or bored by the 4th hole. Because there’s only one “hard” shot when playing par golf: the approach-shot.
