Road Trip!!! Golf 'Down the Shore' 2013
Dave Tutelman -- Nov 2,
2013
( Click on
thumbnail photos
to see full-size pictures )
We played Sea Oaks,
Twisted Dune, and Eagle Ridge. The weather mostly
cooperated, being unseasonably warm for the time of year, with lots of
sunshine Monday and Tuesday. We did have some rain on Wednesday. Not
enough to put a crimp in the golf, but we did notice it at times.
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Sea Oaks
For our first day, we drove straight to Sea
Oaks
in Little Egg Harbor township. Well, we did stop for breakfast at a
diner in Tuckerton, then proceeded to the course. We arrived almost an
hour before our tee time, but the course was nearly empty and they let
us go right out. Sea Oaks is a walkable parkland course, though we
didn't walk it. (We had wanted to travel in one vehicle, and even
Warren's van
wasn't big enough for the four of us, our luggage, our golf bags, AND
our pull carts. So we arrived resigned to ride. Anyway, this was the
only course of the three where walking would have been permitted -- or
even practical if permitted.)
To the
left are Bruce, Rich, and Warren at Sea Oaks. And yes, Rich really is
that tall.
We decided the course should have been named "Sea Pines", because it's
much
more of a south Jersey piney woods course than deciduous oak forest. In
fact, it
reminded me a lot of some of the courses at Pinehurst.
The fairways are pretty generous, and you can score well if you keep
your ball under control. It is manageable from the 6300-yard white
tees, even for us old guys. In fact, I had two birdies on the front
nine myself.
But if you didn't strike it in the direction you wanted, you could
leave yourself with nothing but a punch-out -- which pretty much
describes my back nine. And there are enough places where you must not
just aim at the fairway but place your ball. If you don't, the the next
shot might be a lot more difficult, or you might catch one of the
[relatively few]
fairway bunkers in the middle of the fairway.
The course condition was good. The greens were faster than our Monmouth
County greens, and the bunkers had very playable sand. We liked the
course and would come here again, even just for a winter day trip.
(It's less than an hour from where we live.)
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Twisted
Dune
Tuesday morning we drove more than a half hour to Twisted
Dune
outside Atlantic City.
I
love this course! It is the hardest course we played the three days,
both in reality and sheer intimidation factor. You have to hit the
fairways; the rough is juicy and limits your next shot. The rough is
also relatively narrow; get more than a few yards off the fairway, and
you have to deal with big, nasty bunkers and tall tufts of sea grasses
where you probably won't find your ball. Even if you keep it in the
fairway, it plays long. Even though the white tees are 6332 yards (no
longer than Sea Oaks or, for that matter, Howell Park or Hominy Hill at
home), we found it hard to reach the par-fours in regulation. The
fairways were tight and usually not straight. A decent drive might not
have a sight line to the green at all; the sight line would require a
perfect
drive. Bottom line: it's challenging and a lot of fun, but I didn't
score well at all. (I did break 100, but not by much. Of course, six
strokes worth of penalties didn't help.)
Here's
Warren, Bruce and Rich. And at the right is the sort of stuff your ball
might wander into if it gets past the rough or just off the cart path.
The course is full of
shots where you wonder if you will run out of fairway and wind up with
an unplayable or even lost ball; for instance, keeping the ball in the
safe
right half of the fairway in the picture at the left. (We can't reach
the trouble from the tee, but it doesn't look like it. That is part of
the visual intimidation.)
There is a local rule on the scorecard: "Cart paths are an integral
part of the course.
No relief." Shades of Match Play Madness! But it makes sense, and is
actually an advantage. The cart paths are sandy waste areas, not paved;
a lie in the cart path is usually a better deal than one just off the
path.
On one occasion, my second shot to a [blind] par-4 went through the
fairway and came to rest in the cart path about 50 yards from the
green. The ball was sitting cleanly on fairly hard sand. Any drop from
the path (were relief allowed) would have been an infinitely worse lie
in the tall grass. I hit a downward stroke with a sand wedge --
ball first then sand -- and put the ball on the green and fairly close
to the hole, for one of my few pars of the day.
Here are some more looks at Twisted Dune.
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Eagle Ridge
Our final round was at Eagle Ridge, halfway back home. It
would have
been nice if we decided we liked it, because it is a relatively
short drive from home. But it turned out to be a rather ordinary
parkland course. At any rate, the front nine (the "Pines" nine; they
have 27
holes) was ordinary. Nice, but no more so than any of the better
Monmouth County courses.
Our back nine (the "Links" nine) is a cut below that. Not many trees,
and
none of us liked what they did with the very hilly terrain. I do like
hilly courses; RSG Pittsburgh is one of my favorite events. But I just
didn't like the architecture of this mountain nine; it's too tricked
up. On top of that, it is about a half-mile cart ride out to the first
hole of Links, and another half mile from the final hole back to the
clubhouse. The whole thing is reminiscent of the new nine at Butlers,
which my RSG crowd refuses to play after trying it twice: a long ride
out to a poorly designed, only-cart-golf nine, followed by a long ride
back. Or perhaps
(for both Eagle Ridge and Butlers) it wasn't a design problem; maybe
the
terrain was such that building a good nine is impossible -- but they
tried anyway.
The good news is that they sent us out when we arrived, even though we
were early. We played in a bit of on-and-off drizzle (one of the
reasons I have no pictures), but it wasn't too uncomfortable.
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Obligatory sunset pictures
One or more sunset pictures seem to be part of [almost?] every trip
writeup. Maybe it's because there is so much opportunity to see
beautiful colors in the sky over the bay, right down the block from
Warren's house.
We took a walk across the island (a
whole three blocks) to the ocean beach. The rosy color of the sand and
sky told me we were about to have a spectacular sunset. I hoofed back
to the bay side with my camera for a better look.
The houses along the bay were definitely showing the red illumination.
I hung around for a while, and watched the sun go down on the mainland
side of the bay. And I was rewarded with some really good pictures.
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Last modified 11/2/2016
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