Sand dominates the brand-new 6th hole at Richland.
Scott Kramer
Reynolds Lake Oconee is a thriving Georgia golf community about 90 miles east of Atlanta that boasts five resort courses and now two private courses – the second of which just opened late last week.
I had the privilege of being invited to opening day, to play the 7,090-yard Tom Fazio design called Richland. It’s the only course on property to traverse both sides of the peninsula and touch the lake from both Richland Creek and Oconee River, according to officials. Meanwhile, Fazio has designed more than 210 courses and has a reputation for architecting some of the world’s top and most-fun-to-play layouts.
Even though Richland is brand-new, only nine of its holes are. There was a pre-existing 27-hole Fazio design. Officials took nine of the holes and had Fazio design another nine, which now account for holes 6 through 13, to form this new 18. In my experience, it was a lot of fun to play. The course has generally wide, rolling fairways that can leak into trouble if you hit the far right or left of it, depending on the hole. There’s plenty of subtle elevation change along the way, with what seemed like more than a few holes leaving you uphill approaches into the green. Speaking of the greens, there were many tiers on the large greens of the new holes – leaving pin positioning to determine how easy or tough the greenskeeper wants Richland to play on any given day. Being that those greens are new, I found them to roll ultra-fast in many cases. Both fairways and greens offered some severe sloping along the way. And as I finished my round, I realized I had used every one of the 14 clubs in my bag. That’s unusual, and a tribute to Fazio for his creative hole designs. While I didn’t score well on the new holes, I very much enjoyed the round. I didn’t particularly feel that there was a lot of continuity between the existing and new holes – with respect to looks and playability – but maybe as the course matures that gap will close.
The approach shot on 18.
Scott Kramer
After the round, Fazio addressed the media with some interesting things to say. While pretty pleased with the way this course turned out, he also added that it’s human nature to maybe have regrets later on. “You always think you could do something better, especially down the road,” he says, adding that in general regarding golf course architecture, he is concerned about how many bunkers are being incorporated into America’s latest courses. “What concerns me about so many of the new ones you see is there’s one common denominator – lots of sand. And the problem with sand is it becomes very difficult to maintain. It also becomes very difficult to play for the average player and high-handicap players. Good players don’t have many difficult shots in bunkers, but the guys that don’t make many pars are having a tough time in them. This recent trend to build golf courses in sandbelt areas is great. It’s fun to build golf courses on sand and easy to construct because of drainage. I work very hard at trying not to overbuild the sand, even though there’s a tendency to want to do it. The most important thing with sand is playability. At Augusta National – depending on how you count the bunkers because the landing area on No. 3 has a cluster of five bunkers that can almost be one, two or three because of their shape and form – there are only 41 bunkers on the course. The amazing part about it is that after the 8th tee shot, there’s not another fairway bunker until you get to the 18th hole. If you build a golf course with that few bunkers (today), there’s a chance somebody would say there’s not enough framing or definition to the holes.”
At Richland, I found the bunkers to be fairly steep with thick sand – which can quickly wreak havoc on a scorecard. I found out the hard way, trust me. So did the member I played with on this round. Yet he told me afterwards that he was already looking forward to playing Richland as much as possible in the future. That’s the kind of course it is – fair yet potentially punishing, with plenty of beautiful scenery along the way.
