|
Fall Travel
By Kevin Brafford
The
fire of summer begins fading in September, and soon after Labor Day it’s once
again possible to be outdoors at midday without worrying about heat stroke. This
is a great time of year for a weekend at the beach because the days are still
warm and you don’t have to share the sand and the restaurants with hordes of
tourists. The same travel advice applies to the mountains in September: go now
because soon all the shops and the Blue Ridge Parkway will be crowded with
millions of leaf peepers.
September also is an excellent time to visit the Piedmont, if for no other
reason than to play a few rounds of golf at some of the state’s best courses.
College football games are just around the corner, and rounding out a gridiron
Saturday with a tee time on Sunday makes for a most pleasurable weekend.
And if you’re open for recommendations on where to play a round, the North
Carolina Magazine Golf Panel has inspected five brand new golf courses
that are both challenging and fun.
Those have opened in the state since last Labor Day and will be eligible for the
panel’s consideration as the Best New Course of the Year. That’s down
considerably from the 32 new courses that opened for play in 1996, but while the
quantity has dropped in the years since then, the quality hasn’t.
Three of the new courses are located in the Triangle, the fourth near the coast
in Brunswick County and the fifth in Tarboro, just a couple of par 5s from U.S.
64. Two of the new courses promote themselves as links-type courses — the
Heritage Club in Wake Forest, Farmstead in
Calabash and Cotton Valley in
Tarboro, while the other two are traditional designs — the Preserve at Jordan
Lake in Chapel Hill and Old Chatham in Durham.
All but the latter are daily fee courses that anyone can play any day of the
week. If you want to tee it up at Old Chatham, however, you’ll need a
well-placed friend because the gated course is a private club that doesn’t
even cater to corporate outings. What follows is a description of the new
courses.
Farmstead Golf Links
Farmstead, located on coastal Highway 17 just above the South Carolina line, is
routed along a spectacular piece of land marked by freshwater lakes and native
grasses. The Willard Byrd-Dave Johnson design opened late last fall and sits
less than a mile from its sister course, Meadowlands, which was also designed by
Byrd and opened in 1998.
Farmstead is unique in that its
layout straddles the North Carolina-South Carolina border. In fact, its
memorable 18th hole, a par 6 that plays to a maximum of 767 yards from the
championship black tees and to no less than 635 yards from the red tees, has
golfers beginning the hole in South Carolina and finishing it in North Carolina.
“I tell everyone that the 18th is so long that it had to be built in two
states,” says head professional Mac Hood. “Seriously, it’s a hole that
evolved naturally and has been a great marketing vehicle for us. It’s
important to have that angle that sets yourself off — in the Myrtle Beach
area, we’re competing with 120 courses.”
Hood says that the biggest hitters can reach the green in three, no small feat
in this case. “The hole is designed that, depending on the tees you play, if
you hit two well-struck shots, you’re going to have about 200 yards left,”
he says. “The green isn’t set up to hold a 5-wood or a 3-iron — and it’s
the only hole on the golf course that has a bunker in front of the green. But if
you hit your first two shots big, you’re faced with a choice.”
While Hood is understandably fond of Farmstead’s finishing hole, he believes
that visitors eventually will spend most of their time talking about the
course’s five par 3s. There is variety in the distances — from the blue tees
they play to 178, 166, 163, 228 and 143 yards, respectively — and according to
Hood, “there isn’t a bad one in the lot.”
His favorite is No. 12, which can play as long as 192 yards or as little as 83.
“We actually have six sets of tees we can use,” Hood says, “and they each
give you a different angle. You can play the hole six days in a row from a
different tee each day and face a different challenge. From some tees you need a
long iron and a forced carry over water; from others, the water hazard is
completely out of play.”
Falls rates, either weekday or weekend, are $80, which includes cart. If your
schedule permits teeing off after noon, you can play for $60.
The Heritage Club
Most of the golfers who have made the drive up U.S. 1 to the Heritage Club, just
north of Raleigh in the town of Wake Forest, are impressed with the attention to
detail that’s gone into the design fashioned by Bob Moore, a Chapel Hill
resident who earned his master’s in landscape architecture at N.C. State.
Built on the site of the former Marshall-Stroud Dairy Farm, the Heritage Club
winds through distinctive rolling and scenic wooded terrain. There perhaps has
never been a more planned community in the Triangle, and that extends to the
golf course, where many of the holes are framed by an estimated one million
mature pine trees planted decades ago by developers Jud and Andy Ammons.
“Pines make a beautiful background to golf holes,” says Moore, whose
previous credits with his design group, JMP Golf Design, include the Nags Head
Golf Links and North Shore Country Club near Topsail Beach. “The soil is
different here, but, as far as the backdrop, it makes you almost feel like
you’re in Pinehurst.”
But that’s where the look of normalcy ends. The Heritage Club isn’t “out
there” with the likes of Tobacco Road in Sanford and Tot Hill Farm near
Asheboro, two Mike Strantz designs that golfers either love or hate, but in
Moore’s words, “it’s not traditional, as far as appearance and strategy,
in North Carolina.”
Most noticeable are the more than 100 strategically placed pot bunkers. Couple
those with the constant shifts and movement in the fairways and you have a form
of target golf that’s still fair to the average player. “We don’t try to
pass it off as true links golf,” says Phill Hunt, one of the club’s three
golf professionals and a key member of the community’s development team.
“After all, we’re in the middle of North Carolina. But we feel like the
random pot bunkers dictate the strategy you’ll have to follow to play the
course well. We call it ‘American links’.”
Lakes meander through the course and can come into play on five holes. Both the
par 3 fifth and the par 3 12th require some carry over water, but pale in
comparison with what awaits golfers at the home hole, a par 5 dogleg right that
maxes out at 526 yards. “It’s the most demanding tee shot on the course,”
says Hunt, “a prime example of risk and reward. Players can decide how much of
the dogleg they want to cut off and try to reach the green in two, but if they
miss their drive to the right, they’ll find the water and might make double
bogey.”
While the finishing hole would seem to earn the label as the course’s
“signature,” Moore stops short of placing such a distinction on it.
“I’ve never embraced the philosophy of one signature hole,” he says.
“I’ve always thought that if you do a good job, every hole will be
memorable.”
Fall rates are $48 on Monday through Thursday and $58 on Friday through Sunday,
including cart. Begin your round after 1 p.m. and save $10 daily.
The Links at Cotton Valley
As challenging as it may be to imagine playing a Scottish-style golf course in
the Piedmont, it figures that it’d be that much more difficult when the locale
is Tarboro, a small town along U.S. 64 not too far from Greenville.
But it’s not that way at Cotton Valley, a layout designed by a local resident,
Tom Johnson. Given a couple of years to mature, this 6,773-yard links course
could be one of the best daily fee offerings in eastern North Carolina.
“We think it’s a good golf course that’s only going to get better with
time,” says head professional Tim Smith. “It’s unique to this area and a
course that’s playable, yet not without its share of difficulties. There are a
lot of risk/reward holes that I think people will enjoy playing.”
With fall rates of $25 during the week and $30 on weekends, it’s also a course
that’s easily affordable. Tee off after 1 p.m. and it’s $5 less. And
there’s also a benefit in being a senior — the 50 and over crowd play for
just $18 on Monday through Thursday. “It’s hard to find a better deal
anywhere,” says Smith, “and we’re not too strict on checking IDs.”
Smith has several holes that he favors, the par 5 14th among them. “It’s an
elevated tee box that gives you sort of a mountain feel,” he says, “You have
a big landing area for your drive, so you can really grip it and rip it. And
while it’s listed on the scorecard as more than 500 yards, it plays shorter
because it’s downhill — short enough that even some of your average hitters
can get there with two good shots.”
There’s a penalty, however, if your second shot falls short of good. “You
have to be pretty exact with it,” says Smith, “because there’s trouble on
both sides of the green. It’s a great hole in that you can get rewarded with
an eagle or you an make a quick seven or eight.”
Another of Smith’s favorites is No. 6, a par 3 that plays to 193 yards over
water from the championship blue tees. “It’s a good hole anyway, but if the
wind’s blowing, it’s really challenging as far as club selection. I’ll
take par there every time.”
Old Chatham
In the late 1990s, a group of successful North Carolina business executives —
avid golfers all — convened with a specific purpose. Like many golfers, they
were frustrated by five-hour weekend rounds and course conditions that
deteriorated on occasion from the wear and tear of too much play. Bound by a
vision and with the necessary financial resources, they went about building a
golf course that wouldn’t be accompanied by the usual country club bells and
whistles. There’d be no pool, no tennis courts and no home sites — only a
golf course.
Stuart Franz, who as a co-owner of the Carolinas Golf Group had overseen the
construction of numerous courses in the 1980s and ’90s, was one of the
principals in the venture. Through the years he had crossed paths repeatedly
with noted architect Rees Jones, the son of the legendary Robert Trent Jones.
Land was found near the Chatham, Durham and Wake county lines, less than five
miles from the recently opened Streets at Southpoint mall. Once enough property
was acquired, Jones was brought in to weave his magic. The result: Old Chatham,
a pristine, immaculately manicured course that opened last fall.
“I think there’s an understated elegance to this place,” says head
professional John Marino. “The people who were behind this project were very
patient searching for land — at one time this area was going to be developed
as hunting gameland. We’ve run across bald eagles, wild pigs, turkeys, deer
— you name it and we’ve probably seen it out here.”
That’s not your typical golf course habitat, but that’s just the way the 220
or so members want it. “Our members want to be able to go out and play a quick
round of golf without the crowd and without a lot of fanfare,” says Marino.
“Rees Jones gave them just that, in a real natural, flowing way.”
What you see is what you get with Old Chatham, which features 5,500 square feet
of greens, an average of 305 square feet per green. “It’s a traditional
championship golf course in every sense of the term,” says Marino. “Mr.
Jones says that it’s among his finest works, and that it’s capable of
hosting a big-time tournament should the members decide to pursue it.”
Marino’s favorite hole is the 13th, a dogleg-left par 4 that plays downhill
and to a maximum length of 435 yards. “It takes a strong drive,” he says,
“and even then you might be looking at a long to middle iron into a narrow
green. It’s a hole that’s very pleasing to the eye.”
The Preserve at Jordan Lake
Davis Love III designed a gem with Anderson Creek, the Spring Lake layout that
was honored as last year’s Best New Course, and he hasn’t disappointed with
The Preserve at Jordan Lake, which opened for play just last month.
The course, which has been designated as an Audubon Certified Sanctuary,
actually sits across the lake in the southeastern edge of Chapel Hill. Golfers
can see Jordan Lake on 15 holes.
But forget the water and concentrate on the other scenery. Love, a former
University of North Carolina star who owns 14 career PGA Tour titles, says the
property’s the thing. “What stands out in my mind about The Preserve is how
beautiful it is,” he says. “The golf course flows up and down hills and
through mature hardwood trees that give the course a different look with each
change of season.”
Patrick Barrett, the club’s general manager, moved here from Florida and says
he was amazed at what he found. “What’s most memorable to me are the
elevation changes,” he says. “We’re in the middle of North Carolina, yet
we’ve got 100-foot elevation changes. You just wouldn’t think that’d be
the case.”
Anderson Creek has been lauded for its 18 distinctive — and often difficult
— holes, and Barrett says The Preserve deserves the same respect. “It’s a
championship golf course, and by that I mean it could stand up to the top-tier
players,” he says. “But what I like is that we’ve got five sets of tees,
so if you just use common sense in picking out the set of tees that fits your
ability, you’ll be able to play the golf course well.”
While length off the tee does help any golfer — from the championship Love
tees the course plays to 7,107 yards — it’s a least a little refreshing that
Barrett’s favorite hole is the 15th, a par 4 that at 368 yards from the tips
is the second shortest par 4 on the course. “It’s just a beautifully framed
hole, and the area around the green looks like what you would see at Augusta
National.”
The Preserve opened as a daily fee course, but that might change down the line
as more homesites and memberships are sold. Fall golf rates are $55 on weekdays
and $65 on weekends, including cart, with afternoon discounts available.
Return to magazine index
|
