On most courses I play, the #1 handicap hole on the scorecard is a long par 4.  That's the way it is at my home course, Hop Meadow in Simsbury, CT, where the par 4 7th runs to about 420 yards, the last 80 or so uphill to a green that is crowned in the middle.  Off the tee on the slight dogleg right, you have to maneuver your drive between a trap at the knee of the dogleg and one at the crook.  But there is about 40 yards in between, and bigger hitters can hit over the bunker on the right.  The #2 and #3 handicap holes on the course also stretch well beyond 400 yards.
    The truly great holes are the ones that require for finesse than length to be challenging.  The par 4 6th at Oyster Harbors in Osterville, MA, nicknamed "Water Dog," is just such a hole.  It plays just 388 yards from the white tees (course total 6,514 yards), but since it is a dogleg left, you can cut off at least 40 yards by drawing one around the angle...if you dare.  Fly the trap that guards the crook of the dogleg at the corner and you risk bounding down the sloping fairway and into the pond on the far right side.  Pull your tee shot a little left, and you will be shut out by trees that run up alongside the bunker.  Pull it hard left and you are in the trees.  
    The correct play is right of the trap, about 210 to 225 off the tee; the angle to the elevated green is better from the right side of the fairway, but hit it too far and you will find a lie in some gnarly New England rough or, worse, in the trees beyond.  Then comes the approach to a green that forces an all-carry shot, nearly one club more than the distance would imply in order to fly over the very false front.  The green slopes right to left, and left is the play when the pin is on the right; at Oyster Harbors, you never ever want to be above the hole (see my article earlier in the week about five-putting).
    Number 6 is a stunningly well-designed hole, only the fifth longest par 4 on the course, and deserving of its status as the toughest.  It is as perfectly a conceived hole as I have ever played.

 

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Driver is a liability off the 6th tee at Oyster Harbors.  A 220 yard shot placed from center to far end of the fairway leaves a medium iron to the elevated green.

 

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The green at #6 is more elevated than it appears here.  The play is center left when the pin is right. 

    Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that this weekend, residential building company D.R. Horton "is using an auction to sell 53 homes in San Diego. The starting bid for some units will be as much as 50% lower than previous prices, according to the auction Web site."
    San Diego has about the best climate in the nation, which means darn close to 365 days a year of golf weather.  And the real estate market there, about as bad as it gets once you discount (no pun intended) Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix, seems like the classic buying opportunity for folks who have intended to move there all along (assuming they don't need a sub-prime mortgage to swing it).  I have no interest in moving to the Left Coast, but I defend anyone's right to do so, especially at bargain basement auction prices.  This could be one of those opportunities, and I was hungry for more details.
    Fuhgeddaboutit.  I checked the Horton web site and found no mention of any auction.  I tried a web search with the terms "Horton," "San Diego," "real estate" and "auction."  Nothing...except a blog article by Diana Olick of CNBC online describing how, she too, had searched largely in vain for some info about the auction.  She cross referenced an auction house's online listings for this Saturday in San Diego with the names of Horton's communities there and discovered that 53 units in two of the communities were under the gavel this weekend.  Nowhere on the site for the Real Estate Disposition Corporation is there mention that these are Horton homes.  I wouldn't be surprised if REDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Horton (although there may be rules against that).
    Publicly traded companies like Horton owe the investment community a bit more transparency than that.  Last week, a competitor, Hovnanian, bellied up to the bar and announced deep discounts on more than 2,000 homes.  It isn't as if the rest of us are in the dark about how bad the housing market is at the moment.
    But these must be demoralizing times inside building companies.  Maybe Horton has had to lay off the copywriter in the investor relations department who usually posts news about the company on their web site. (The writers are always the first to go!)  Better they should lay off the schizophrenic employee with the naming rights to the Horton communities.  The two being auctioned off this weekend are the appropriately named Esperanza, which means "hope," and La Boheme.  I am not an opera fan, but I understand the Puccini opera is about struggle and poverty, and it ends miserably.  Let's hope the weekend is more esperanza and less boheme for Horton.
    You can read Ms. Olick's article here, and find the auction site here.