Founders Course at PENN NATIONAL

[BEND OF THE RIVER GC]

Older Ault design...needs a "re-do"

We played (and stayed) at PENN NATIONAL this past weekend. The Founders Course is the older layout of the two golf courses offered here. In general, I was pretty disappointed with this course. It just didn't come close to the Iron Forge course at all. It was in OK shape, the greens were excellent, but it was WAY TOO TIGHT for my liking. This course boasted some killer rough to go along with a VERY HEALTHY dosage of TREES! Cut some of those jokers down! I also wondered why the rough was so incredibly high when the course was so narrow and tight anyway?????? We ended up only playing 9 holes, and then switched our 18 hole tee time for the next day back to the Iron Forge course for our last round here.....In all fairness, Penn National does a great job marketing the courses, I just didn't enjoy this layout. BTW, these were pics of the "open" holes, I was too busy hacking out to take pics of the tight ones....My advice to you, you had better be hitting it extremely straight in order to come close to a decent score here. Here are the pics:

[irish09]

We spent three days playing each course twice last summer and I walked away thinking this was the better of the two courses. I couldn't disagree with you more. The rough and trees are the epitome of American golf. The first hole is a short yet testy start, #2 is a very solid par 5, there are nice par 4s on the front and (I guess you didn't stick around long enough to see) the finishing three holes are awesome. You can score well here if you keep it in or near the fairway. I had one of my best rounds here.