Golf Digest: #64
Golfweek: #27 Classic
How I got on: My coworker is a member and she set up a round with her daughter, who played D-I college golf. Another coworker and I joined her on a Saturday morning in July '17.
Driving into the clubhouse you see a number of the front nine holes in a meadow of fescue (which would be my fairway for the day). The clubhouse and locker room are OLD SCHOOL. I appreciate the untouched feeling of the amenities. But the Tillinghast design is the real treat. The green complexes are what make the track. The third hole was especially interesting. The green sits atop a hill and has an enormous false front with a bunker in the fairway at the bottom. Both of my playing partners ended up in the bunker at one point, and not in any ordinary fashion. One flubbed a short approach that didn't quite make the green and rolled into the bunker. The other chipped from the back of the green and trickled off the front and rolled into the bunker as well.
The front nine in the meadow feels a bit like Valley Club's finishing holes in Santa Barbara, only with more dramatic greens. The back nine has more elevation changes and winds through trees. I'm probably more partial to the front, but both are great. Some courses are easily appreciated, such as Bethpage Black, but it's not a course I'd want to play daily. Somerset would be a great experience daily, and I think it'd be tough to imagine all the variations the greens and surrounding complexes could throw at you.
I played the white tees because my playing partner wanted to. It's never a good idea for me. I'm too tempted to hit driver and end up blowing it all over a course because, 1) I hit it 290-300 yards all over the place, and 2) even some good drives end up in the wrong places because my landing areas from the whites can be ill-suited to a driver. I should have hit hybrid more, but I just can't control myself. So I got enough stickers in my socks that required me to throw them away post-round. I was lucky to even find most of my wayward drives, but not enough of them. The final tally was crap. I need another crack at this track, and hope it materializes.
View from 11 green toward the clubhouse
The par 3 12th - short but a wild green
The 17th - this is what the fairway looks like. I wouldn't know, but I do know that tree very well. I'll blame it on the blind tee shot.
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