Whats the hardest course you have ever played?

[Chanceman]

On 7/7/2022 at 3:05 AM, flognut said:

Bethpage Black

TPC Sawgrass

Engineers CC 

Fiddler Elbow Forest 

Montauk Downs 

Montauk Downs? I had not heard it was that difficult. Please explain. 

[hammergolf]

On 7/6/2022 at 10:03 AM, trilinkrealty said:

Recently played a tourney at Pasatiempo and the course was tipped out and I'm pretty sure they put every pin in the craziest spot they could find on every hole!  Also double rolled the greens before the 1 o clock shot gun start.  There were a lot of good golfers there and not many good scores!

Pasa will test your game no doubt. Classic MacKenzie!

[flognut]

On 7/9/2022 at 9:01 AM, Chanceman said:

Montauk Downs? I had not heard it was that difficult. Please explain. 

when the wind is up at 20mph or more it is difficult. calm not so much i hear. but ive never played it in calm weather

[3eagles18]

Old Head. Cold; wind howling and drizzle. Perfect day in Ireland.

[CDM]

On 7/9/2022 at 11:16 PM, hammergolf said:

Pasa will test your game no doubt. Classic MacKenzie!

 

Have not played Pasa yet but some friends did a week ago.

 

Both said it was harder then expected because it is so "tilted".  Uneven lies with ball well below your feet right in the middle of the fairways creating a fade shot and the green tilting left to right.  They had a few "choice" thoughts of a few holes BUT both "liked" the course and said it is a course you have to play a few times to know how to play it well.  Both said it really is a target course and have to know how the ball will run or bounce around.... 

 

Based on the "vibe\" of the discussion I asked if they would play it again....

 

"A lot of good courses in the area, maybe do it again but would try a few others first...though glad we played it" 

 

Now it makes me want to play it once to see 😃.  In my "mind" now it is in the Tobacco Road realm, you either love it or you don't. 

 

 

[Obee]

On 6/29/2022 at 5:47 AM, tagermo said:

Carnoustie on a windy day; they call it CarNASTY for a reason. 

 

Royal Dornoch - In early 90's when I first played it there was gorse everywhere. They have since cleared out some of the gorse so its not near as penal. Once again the wind makes it a difficult course. #2 at Dornoch might be one of the most difficult short par 3's in the world. 

 

Stonebridge - Pete Dye course fairways were wet and the wind was blowing and it played long and hard, the par 4's are beasts. 

 

St. Andrews OLD COURSE - first time I played on the front nine I thought whats the big deal this is not that hard, the caddy must have read my mind because he says wait until the back nine when the wind picks up off the water. It was a totally different course. 

 

 

Shot a nice 71 the first and only time I ever had the pleasure of playing The Old Course. I'll never forget it.

[hammergolf]

It’s definitely a test, but it’s fair. You’re not going to scrape it around there. Honestly, I’m sure when MacKenzie designed it he never thought they would keep the greens at the speed they do. I wonder what cross camber fwys they are talking about? The 11th hole does have a camber where the ball is above your feet, but the approach doesn’t have to be a fade. Then there is a split fwy on 14 with an upper and lower section where a ball may get stuck on a slope I guess. But the key is around the greens. There are some spots where you could struggle to keep a bunker shot on the green. MacKenzie was known to design a course to test every part of the game. Pasatiempo is one of his best, but familiarity certainly helps. I try to recommend a caddie for the first round there.

[ChipStrokes]

7 hours ago, flognut said:

when the wind is up at 20mph or more it is difficult. calm not so much i hear. but ive never played it in calm weather

i played it two days ago when it was 78 and sunny with little to no wind. definitely not a tough course in calm conditions. 

[chisag]

... I played Sandpiper in Santa Barbara right behind a Pac 10 year end tournament. Right along the ocean with winds around 20-25 and the greens running at 13. The round took a little over 5 hours and I rolled 3 putts off the green when putting from above the hole and I barely touched them. 18th is a 181 yd par 3 and we kept seeing excellent golfers coming up short of the green with a front pin and wondered how so many could miss short. Not hit on and roll off, just land short. Once we got on the course we understood they would rather chip up the slope than chance being above the hole as their next shot would be off the green in front anyway. 

.. Play it again a year later with normal green speeds and a slight breeze and it was a different golf course. 

[sandpounder]

I played Pine Valley  a few times in 1977-1980.  Caddied there as well.  It was my summer job while on break from school.  It was 3 miles from my home and I would walk there as a kid & teenager.  My uncle was a caddie as well.  My parents were friends with the higher-ups at the club.  When I caddied there, less than almost nobody broke 80.  We are talking great players as well, just got chewed up by all the hazards.  The forced carries & tight fairways are punishing.  Devil's a****** got a lot of balls & it was very difficult to get out.  The 10th is ranked in the top 10 of scariest holes in golf. 

 

"cut & pasted"

No. 10, 161 yards
“There is room on this earth for one Pine Valley,” wrote Peter Dobereiner in Down the Nineteenth Fairway, “just as there is a place in the entertainment industry for the horror film, the ghost train and the chamber of horrors.” The shortest hole on the nation’s most penal course calls for an unerring short-iron shot to a raised, undulating green girdled by a ragged sand pit to the left; and by a deep, cone-shaped pot bunker at the front right corner. This is the “Devil’s a******.” The only escape is backwards.

 

 Byron Nelson played Gene Littler there in 1962 & it was televised by Shell's Wonderful World of Golf.  Nelson shot a 74 & Littler shot a 76.  There is no other course that rivals it's difficulty.  Tucked away in Clementon, NJ it is rated the world's greatest golf course by many of golf's journalists & publications.  I know the course well.  It has a rating of par 77.  The slope is 155.  Of course there was no slope ratings back then. It was a great time back then.  Saw & experienced things about golf I will never forget.  

Edited July 12, 2022 by sandpounder
correction

[Chanceman]

I have a friend who played PV and scored like 85 and he’s no Tiger. Maybe the back tees are tougher.

[DArnie]

On 9/12/2021 at 3:25 PM, Jim53 said:

Fuego Maya in Antigua, Guatemala. Well it was anyway, it go buried when the volcano erupted. It was a Pete Dye Course and just crazy hard, we were walking up the 2nd hole I believe and the ground was shaking. It was serverly uphill and the green was a flat top the rejected balls back down the hill, I hit 4 shots that went back further by me each time from 100 yds. 

Beautiful place, the volcano was smoking that day and blew about a year later. That hole was a straight shot down the mountain and the club house was at the bottom, its all gone now.

Wow, I've been there 3 different times (trying to learn Spanish for my job) and didn't know there was a course there. But the last time I was there was in the late 90's, A very special place, 

[TBD203]

On 7/15/2022 at 8:49 AM, Chanceman said:

I have a friend who played PV and scored like 85 and he’s no Tiger. Maybe the back tees are tougher.

Friend of mine who has been as good as +3 shot 76 there and told the person who invited him it wasn't as hard as he was told. He hasn't been invited back since the mid 80s.

[Jim53]

18 hours ago, DArnie said:

Wow, I've been there 3 different times (trying to learn Spanish for my job) and didn't know there was a course there. But the last time I was there was in the late 90's, A very special place, 

Sadly it is not there any longer, the course was completely destroyed.

[Mascot]

bethpage black if were going by slope and rating.  Ignoring that it would be the local dog track down the street since you gotta play out of mud and rocks 😂

[AC168]

Kiawah in massive winds … Bethpage in downpour

[BG5]

Two courses that come to mind are Blackwolf Run @ Whistling Straits and also the Bear (Nicklaus Course) at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City Michigan.

 

Both great courses but extremely difficult for the average weekend warrior like myself.

[smoky25]

Played Royal Dornoch a couple weeks ago in 30-40mph winds. My caddie, an ex-club champion there, apologized and said he wouldn't tee it up in those winds. Would love to play it in calmer conditions but didn't get the chance. Nicklaus called the par 3 #2 the shortest par 5 on the planet and, after playing it, I think he was serious.

[TwistedSister]

Dubsdread at Cog Hill Lemont IL.  Played the Monday after the Western Open in the late 90's(Twice).  I was a 6 Capper and didn't break 100.  Greens were like glass(and were not cut on Monday) and the rough had not been cut in 10 days.  Hit a wood from a decent lie on the edge of the rough.  Hit it pretty solid and flew it 75 yds. Boy was that fun!

[Phil0110]

The Ranch in San Jose was the most difficult for me.

[doc52]

On 7/11/2022 at 2:20 PM, hammergolf said:

It’s definitely a test, but it’s fair. You’re not going to scrape it around there. Honestly, I’m sure when MacKenzie designed it he never thought they would keep the greens at the speed they do. I wonder what cross camber fwys they are talking about? The 11th hole does have a camber where the ball is above your feet, but the approach doesn’t have to be a fade. Then there is a split fwy on 14 with an upper and lower section where a ball may get stuck on a slope I guess. But the key is around the greens. There are some spots where you could struggle to keep a bunker shot on the green. MacKenzie was known to design a course to test every part of the game. Pasatiempo is one of his best, but familiarity certainly helps. I try to recommend a caddie for the first round there.

 

I hit the fairway on 10 at Pasa and found the ball above my feet with downslope as well (I'm left handed). It made me laugh, all I could do was hit a punch from 120 out.

[hammergolf]

7 hours ago, doc52 said:

 

I hit the fairway on 10 at Pasa and found the ball above my feet with downslope as well (I'm left handed). It made me laugh, all I could do was hit a punch from 120 out.

You mean you didn’t just aim it at the OB stakes left of the green and sling it in there??? 😉 No doubt it is very demanding on approach shots. 

[danfido]

On 7/31/2022 at 5:28 PM, BG5 said:

Two courses that come to mind are Blackwolf Run @ Whistling Straits and also the Bear (Nicklaus Course) at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City Michigan.

 

Both great courses but extremely difficult for the average weekend warrior like myself.

While I certainly haven't played a bunch of courses all over the place, I recently played Meadow Valleys at Blackwolf Run, and it was a very difficult course, especially with the wind. Some of the fastest and most difficult greens I've ever played on.

 

The Plantation course at Kapalua comes to mind as well. That course sure did humble me as an extremely average golfer, especially within the context of Cam Smith going 34-under at the Sentry back in January!

[zingbust]

Hardest course I've ever played was a little 9 hole track in St. George Utah called Dixie Red Hills, owned by the city.  This was supposed to be the easiest course out of the 8 or so that I played on my recent golf trip which was exhausting because of the constant heat and humidity we've been experiencing out here.

This par 34 course played much longer than the scorecard showed and playing from the tips and playing without a cart was a mistake I made that I'll never forget as the heat and humidity got to me physically in brutal fashion.  The ball hardly ever traveled more than 200 yards off the tee even when I struck it solid because the heavy damp air kept it short.  But the key as to why this supposedly "easy" course was so difficult was the severe doglegs on about 5 of the 9 holes, almost all of the par 4's and 5's.

 

The doglegs were so severe that my 2nd shot always forced me to carry the trees guarding the corner of the dogleg.  Tall trees.  Trees that would require me to hit a lob wedge to hit over them but I never had lob wedge into the green, it was always at least a 7 iron and I can't hit a 7 iron high enough to clear the trees and reach the green or close to the green.  So what was I to do??  Hit a Tiger-like massive slice or massive hook to go around them?  I don't have those shots in my bag.  So I was forced to play every par 4 like a par 5.  I also had bad luck losing balls in the heavy rough due to not hitting it straight enough and due to being so exhausted by the relentless heat and humidity.

 

Hardest 9 holes I've ever played.

[vallygolf]

On 8/13/2022 at 5:45 AM, zingbust said:

Hardest course I've ever played was a little 9 hole track in St. George Utah called Dixie Red Hills, owned by the city.  This was supposed to be the easiest course out of the 8 or so that I played on my recent golf trip which was exhausting because of the constant heat and humidity we've been experiencing out here.

This par 34 course played much longer than the scorecard showed and playing from the tips and playing without a cart was a mistake I made that I'll never forget as the heat and humidity got to me physically in brutal fashion.  The ball hardly ever traveled more than 200 yards off the tee even when I struck it solid because the heavy damp air kept it short.  But the key as to why this supposedly "easy" course was so difficult was the severe doglegs on about 5 of the 9 holes, almost all of the par 4's and 5's.

 

The doglegs were so severe that my 2nd shot always forced me to carry the trees guarding the corner of the dogleg.  Tall trees.  Trees that would require me to hit a lob wedge to hit over them but I never had lob wedge into the green, it was always at least a 7 iron and I can't hit a 7 iron high enough to clear the trees and reach the green or close to the green.  So what was I to do??  Hit a Tiger-like massive slice or massive hook to go around them?  I don't have those shots in my bag.  So I was forced to play every par 4 like a par 5.  I also had bad luck losing balls in the heavy rough due to not hitting it straight enough and due to being so exhausted by the relentless heat and humidity.

 

Hardest 9 holes I've ever played.

Sounds brutal

 

https://golf.com/instruction/humid-day-help-off-tee-meteorologist/#:~:text=A golf ball goes a,by causing it to expand.

[Golferpaul]

Ko'olau Golf Club.  The slope today is 155 because that is the maximum that the USGA will allow, but when it opened (and when I played it) it was 162.  

 

The Ocean Course 79.1, 155

 

Carnoustie 77.4, 143

 

Whistling Straits 77.2, 152

 

[j.b.newton]

Ill second the Mystic Creek in Arkansas.

[lurkinghobbit]

My opinion - The Judge on the RTJ Golf Trail.  Have never had so many good-to-great shots get punished like that.  Stripe a 3 iron down the middle, never find the ball.  Land on the fringe of a par 3, never find the ball.  It hurt.

 

And I've seen a lot of mentions of other courses I've played that I did not find as difficult - Whistling Straits (I just played like a** that day, could not blame the course), Black Wolf Run, PGA West Stadium, Torrey Pines South.  None of them stood out as punishing as The Judge.

 

I will give Valhalla an honorable mention though.  That was a tough day.

 

[CDM]

18 minutes ago, lurkinghobbit said:

My opinion - The Judge on the RTJ Golf Trail.  Have never had so many good-to-great shots get punished like that.  Stripe a 3 iron down the middle, never find the ball.  Land on the fringe of a par 3, never find the ball.  It hurt.

 

And I've seen a lot of mentions of other courses I've played that I did not find as difficult - Whistling Straits (I just played like a** that day, could not blame the course), Black Wolf Run, PGA West Stadium, Torrey Pines South.  None of them stood out as punishing as The Judge.

 

I will give Valhalla an honorable mention though.  That was a tough day.

 

 

Agree on the Judge.  

 

It started on hole one. Two players hit the shot down the middle of the fairway and it bounced off that center nob and it ran off straight into the hazard area.   That was consistent the whole round of odd stuff that left a bad taste for everyone. 

[Dpadman]

21 hours ago, Golferpaul said:

Ko'olau Golf Club.  The slope today is 155 because that is the maximum that the USGA will allow, but when it opened (and when I played it) it was 162.  

 

The Ocean Course 79.1, 155

 

Carnoustie 77.4, 143

 

Whistling Straits 77.2, 152

 

Looks like Ko'olau Golf Club is permanently closed?  Bummer.