Damned if you do:  Those who steer clear of Hell bunker and play down the right side of #14 at the Old Course will be faced with an approach over a large hump that guards the right front of the green. 

Par 5 odyssey features heaven, Hell and a little Kitchen

    The way American golf holes are rated tends to be annoying and a little insulting to decent golfers.  Par 5s too often receive the #1 handicap hole designation no matter how mild the challenge.  On some courses, you know that one or two of the par 3s are tougher than the par 5s.  But length appears to equate to difficulty for those who rate golf courses, probably because most golfers have trouble putting three straight shots together.
    The Scots have more respect for their golfers, and on courses I played in Scotland recently, the toughest hole is as likely to be a par 4 as it is a par 5.  At Scotscraig Golf Club in Tayport, the 4th hole, called Westward Ho, measures just 366 from the tips but is the #1 "stroke index" hole.  At the seaside Crail Balcomie Links, the long par 4 5th, the aptly named Hell's Hole, plays around the shoreline and into the prevailing winds and rates toughest at 447 yards from the tips.  The three par 5s at Crail are rated the 5th, 10th and 14th most difficult on the course.
    Perhaps their par 5s play shorter than American fives because of longer rolls on links fairways.  Or maybe the Scots hit the ball straighter than Americans do, having had a few hundred years more practice.  But straight is not at all helpful at the toughest hole at St. Andrews' Old Course, the par 5 14th called simply Long.  The Old Course yardage book calls it the "model for strategic golf holes the world over."  I call it beautifully brutal.
    The middle of the three tees on #14 plays from 523 yards, and the strategy depends entirely on how the wind is blowing off the nearby Firth.  If you are able to ignore the Siren call of the cityscape beyond the green and hit the ball 210 yards into the wind, the play is down the left, over the group of four bunkers called the Beardies, to an area of fairway aptly named the Elysian Fields.  In mythology, Elysium is the eternal resting place of the virtuous and the heroic.  I don't know how virtue plays into the tee shot at #14, except in regards to patience, but heroic effort certainly comes into play if the wind is blowing. (And how often does it not blow at St. Andrews?)  The less adventurous will find ample fairway to the right of Elysium, but a wall with out of bound beyond it runs down the entire right side of the fairway, making placement there almost as scary as the Beardies.
    If you negotiate the tee shot properly and make it to the Elysian Fields, the next play is a lay-up of 170 to 190 yards to a small area to the left of one of the most famous bunkers in the world, the Hell bunker, placed front and center on the path to the green.  It is large, it is arced and shaped in such a way as to maximize the potential for a lie under the perfectly vertical and sodded front edges, and it is strangely beautiful.  For those shy about risking Hell, laying up short of the bunker is not much of an option since the tiny but deadly Kitchen bunker guards Hell.  I have not been able to find the derivation of the name Kitchen, but Cerberus would be a more apt name for this little devil.  
    Those with no pretense of heroics can play short and right of the Hell bunker, but that leaves a 160-yard approach to the green over a large hump that guards the front right.  Land on either side of the hump and the ball will skitter away from the green.  Land over the hump and chances are good the ball will roll off the back of the firm and sloped green.  In short, the chance of getting within easy two-putt range will be remote if you approach from the right side of the fairway.
    Okay, let's say you make it safely to the area just left of Hell, leaving about 125 yards into the largest green you have ever played (the 14th green combines with the 4th).  You are now faced with an all-carry shot over two menacing pot bunkers called Ginger Beer (each appearing to be about the size of a bottle of ginger beer).  The green is elevated and, of course, firm; the approach must be short in order to roll on and have a chance of staying on the putting surface.  If you have made it there in three shots, you have an excellent shot at par or even birdie -- assuming you haven't pulled the ball onto the 4th green and left yourself a putt of 50 yards.
    Welcome home, Odysseus.

A play off the tee at #14 to the Elysian Fields at the Old Course will leave you with a lay-up to the left of the other-worldly Hell bunker. 

    My brother Bob recoiled at my idea the other day that the U.S. government consider tearing down some homes that are in default.  I saw that idea, proposed in the Wall Street Journal, as a way to avoid further urban blight and spur the housing market by shrinking the overall inventory of unsold homes.  Here is what Bob wrote me:
    "DON'T tear the houses down.  Instead, use them to house homeless individuals and families, including Katrina victims, with virtually no-cost long-term contracts, so long as the heads of households agree to be retrained to work on massive infrastructure programs.  The result.  You:
1) Get the housing off the market without destroying anything,
2) Help solve the homeless dilemma, and,
3) Gather together the labor force needed to help repair the nation's ailing infrastructure.
     Win/Win/Win.  It's stupid just to tear these houses down."
    Although Bob's idea is filled with compassion and logic, one wonders about the additional bureaucracy needed to figure out who qualifies for the houses; what it will take to set up the entire retraining scheme; and what kind of buyout those who hold the paper on the homes will accept.  I am tempted to wonder as well if it is possible to train some people who signed up for loans they had to know they couldn't repay.  I don't buy into the theory that all of them were ignorant stooges hoodwinked by greedy mortgage brokers.  Not all of them.
    On the other hand, I am willing to cut them all a break if they promise to march to the mansion of Countrywide Financial's Angelo Mozillo and drag him to Las Vegas or Miami or some other area savaged by foreclosures, and give him the public flogging he deserves. 

    And when they are done, lock him up...in one of those foreclosed houses.
 

Visually and strategically, the 9th at Shelter Harbor is the epitome of a great par 5, with a lay-up second shot that demands thought and care.

by Tim Gavrich

    On Monday, my father and I had the pleasure of playing the Shelter Harbor Golf Club in Charlestown, Rhode Island, during a fundraiser outing for my former high school.  Shelter Harbor is challenging, varied in its shot-making requirements, and a great deal of fun.  I have been struggling the rest of this week to think of where it ranks among the few other great courses I have played.  Only Newport CC, Yale GC, and Pinehurst No. 2 stand ahead of it in my mind.  I would rank Shelter Harbor ahead of two other outstanding courses I have played -- Cuscowilla, a highly ranked course in Georgia by Coore & Crenshaw, and TPC River Highlands in Connecticut, one of the PGA players' favorite courses.  
    One of the most important aspects of golf course architecture is a good mix of playability and difficulty.  These may seem like opposite characteristics, but when they come together, as they do at Shelter Harbor, the result is a top-notch course.  
    Higher handicap players will appreciate the wide fairways on the course although they may not feel comfortable with some of the forced carries (e.g. the short, two-shot par 4 13th hole, which requires the tee shot to clear an expanse of wetlands).  But pains seem to have been taken via local rules to minimize the penalty. (On the 13th, the drop area across the wetlands affords a shot to the green, so that the player can easily save bogey, if not make a one-putt par.)  The trouble off Shelter Harbor's fairways is often severe, coming in the form of bunkers out of which the only escape is often a wedge back to the fairway.  In an age in which bunkers have been leveled to the point that many don't quite fit the definition of "hazard," Shelter Harbor's sandy spots are best admired from afar (and by camera, as the accompanying photographs attest).
    Another prerequisite for architectural greatness is interest and variation on and around greens.  The world's great golf courses - the Pine Valleys, Augusta Nationals, and Oakmonts - are renowned for their superb greens.  I cannot think of more than a few more varied, challenging, and fun sets of 18 greens than those I played at Shelter Harbor.  In addition to being exquisitely maintained (not surprising for a club whose initiation fees are in the neighborhood of $125,000), these greens reward thoughtful shot making and creativity.  Many of them have wild undulations that allow the player to move the ball around the green in interesting ways.  For example, some slopes on Shelter Harbor's greens have "backboards" behind the pins that give you an option to hit past the pin and bring the ball back.  The greens were fast, perfectly cut and held every well-struck shot. I could spend hours on and around these greens.
    I enjoyed every hole at Shelter Harbor, but two stand out as being particularly excellent.  Hole #4, a long par three, is one of the best one-shot holes I have ever played.  The hole appears to be architects Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry's interpretation of a Biarritz hole, a long par three that plays to a huge, deep green with a deep trench running sideways through the middle.  Those who have played Yale Golf Club in Connecticut and its 9th hole will recognize the classic Biarritz.  The green on Shelter Harbor's 4th hole is 62 yards from front to back and a larger-than average Biarritz trench runs sideways across the middle third of the green.  This allows for pin placements in the trench; trenches at most Biarritz holes are not wide enough for that.  There is also a pronounced slope at the rear-middle of the green that allows a player whose ball has found the bottom of the trench (a player such as myself) to putt well beyond the hole in the hopes of the ball rolling up the slope and back down towards a hole located near the base of that slope.  This is a great example of the creativity made possible by contours in the greens at Shelter Harbor.
    The par five 9th is another fantastic hole.  Two bunkers in the center of the fairway serve a more psychological than practical purpose - they make the fairway seem narrower than it is.  A drive just left of these bunkers can put the player in position to blast a fairway wood uphill to a green tucked up around a corner below Shelter Harbor's magnificent Cape Cod-style clubhouse.  Bunkers farther down the fairway punish any casual lay-up shot, and a large boulder guards the left edge of the fairway about 125 yards from the green and so too does one just in front of the green on the right.  If the player chooses (successfully) to be more aggressive with the lay-up shot, he will be rewarded with a more straightforward pitch up the length of the green.  The 9th green itself is two-tiered, with sideboards and backboards to reward creative wedge play (or a shot hit to pin high but slightly offline).  The 9th is definitely a birdie hole that can get away from a player who does not give thought to each of his first three shots.
    If there is any drawback to Shelter Harbor's layout, it is the lack of a drivable par four.  Hole 7 is an interesting par four in its own right, with a tiny green protected by steep slopes short and long.  Even though it is listed at 336 from the members' tees and plays about 40 feet downhill, it is not as reachable as the website description (www.shgcri.com) indicates.  It is a good hole; it just is not reachable from the tee for even the longest bangers.
    Shelter Harbor is a fantastic golf course from beginning to end.  Even though it is only three-years old, I would venture to say that it is one of the best golf courses built in New England in recent memory and may challenge for best-in-Rhode Island honors in time (a post held by the renowned Newport Country Club).         

    Those who have the opportunity to play Shelter Harbor will experience an unforgettable day of golf.

From the tee (above), the 4th green is easy to hit but woe be to anyone whose ball comes to rest in the mid-green trench (see below) when the pin is elsewhere.