Bob Cullen

Comparative Advantage and Golf in Costa Rica

Bob Cullen — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:35:32 +0000

Costa Rican golf at its best: the 15th at Hacienda Pinilla

Contemplating golf in Costa Rica, I think of the Law of Comparative Advantage. Perhaps you remember it from Economics 101. Put simply, it suggests that things be done in the place where they are done best. You could, perhaps, grow rubber trees in Alaska if you were willing to invest enough in greenhouses and heating oil. But why would you? There are tropical countries much better suited to growing rubber trees.

Similarly, you can play golf on a Costa Rican vacation. But should you? Maybe you should reserve your time in Costa Rica for things in which Costa Rica has a comparative advantage, like spotting a Resplendent Quetzal. On my own recent trip, the peak experience came in a rain forest rather than on a golf course. After hiking for a couple of hours, our trail took us to a clear, cold stream flowing down a mountainside. There was a 10-foot waterfall and a deep pool. Best swim I ever had, and one of the pleasures for which Costa Rica has a comparative advantage.

Golf, in this light, is an exotic import to Costa Rica, It’s not as exotic as a rubber tree nursery in Alaska. But it’s not as natural as a links on the coast of, say, County Kerry.

Comparative advantage: A Costa Rican family swims in a rain forest pool.

On top of that, there’s the pricing system for golf in Costa Rica. The courses charge different rates for different people. There’s an insider price for locals and members. And then there is the sucker–excuse me, visitor–price for occasional tourists. I played at Hacienda Pinilla with a fellow named Steve, who retired and moved to Costa Rica a year or two ago. As a member, he paid annual dues of $3,000 per year, or $250 a month. This entitled him to play as much golf as he wanted, and he played a lot. I, on the other hand, paid a green fee of $185 for my round. So my single round cost nearly as much as the monthly dues that entitled him to play a couple of dozen times. At Papagayo Golf & Country Club, members pay $25 a round. As a one-time visitor, I paid $100. Given the state of that golf course, $25 would have been fair.

I know that tiered pricing systems exist around the world. But they irritate me, and they seem egregious in Costa Rica.

That said, there are some golfers–and God help me, I am one–who need their fix during the winter. If they’re going to Costa Rica, they’re going to play golf. So the question arises, where? If you’re going to the Pacific Coast, here are four choices, ranked in order of preference. (For the full review of each course, click on the highlighted link.)

1. Hacienda Pinilla

A Mike Young design a few miles south of Playa Tamarindo on the Nicoya Peninsula, Hacienda Pinilla is a beautifully conditioned, wind-swept and challenging golf course, built on land once devoted to ranching. It’s part of a 4,500-acres complex that, thanks to the Great Recession, still houses way more iguanas and howler monkeys than people. Two holes play to the edge of the Pacific, which is a beautiful backdrop. But the best hole may be the short, tricky, inland par-four 10th. And the most fun may be the two par fives that are designed to play with the prevailing wind. Feel powerful.

There’s a hotel, La Posada, on the grounds of the Hacienda Pinilla complex. Some of the casitas and condos are rentable through sites like www.vrbo.com. There’s a big Marriott resort adjacent. Or you can stay at one of the little hotels in the nearby beach towns. Hacienda Pinilla accepts outside play.

2. Reserva Conchal

It’s hard to say which is the better golf course–Reserva Conchal or Hacienda Pinilla. Pinilla is windier, more open, and the contours are not as dramatic. Conchal has more ups and down in the terrain, more water in play, and less wind. The fairways are correspondingly a bit tighter. They’re about equally well conditioned, which is to say very well indeed. They both have top-notch practice facilities. I rate Hacienda Pinilla higher because it doesn’t try quite so hard to give you the impression that it’s doing you a favor to take your money.

The second green at Reserva Conchal

Like Hacienda Pinilla, Reserva Conchal is part of a gated enclave. There’s a Westin resort inside, and condos within the complex are for rent on sites like www.vrbo.com. If you’re staying outside the gates, you have to call and email to get a tee time.

3. La Iguana

South of the Nicoya Peninsula, on the coast at a village called Playa Herradura, the Costa Rican climate gets significantly warmer, wetter and more classically tropical. The natural environment changes to a rain forest. And that’s the setting for La Iguana, a Ted Robinson, Jr. design that is part of a resort/condo complex called Los Suenos.

Steep, thickly forested hills drop abruptly to the sea in this part of Costa Rica. Robinson built his course in the narrow valleys between the major hillsides. Some holes go uphill and others come back downhill. Finally, Nos. 15-18 play on relatively flat ground near the beach. The course is tight and if you hit the ball out of play, it’s likely to be gone in the rain forest. La Igauana, probably because of the climate, can’t match the greenkeeping standards of Hacienda Pinilla and Reserva Conchal. The greens are grainy and the fairways can be scruffy. But it’s decent golf and it’s the only option on the coastal strip that includes popular destinations like Jaco and Manuel Antonio National Park.

The Los Suenos complex includes a big Marriott resort hotel and condos that are available for rent by the owners. There are lots of other hotels up and down this stretch of the coast, and La Iguana accepts outside play.

4. Papagayo Golf & Country Club

A country golf course laid out by its owners, a pair of Montanans named David Reynolds and Michael Mills, Papagayo would be innocuous if it were located in rural Montana and charged $30 a round. Unfortunately, it charges visitors $100. and it’s definitely not worth that.

The fairways are weedy and hard. The greens, which get some irrigation, are tiny. The design shows amateur flaws like fairways that kick balls into the tall grass.

There’s no lodging associated with Papapgayo, but you could play it by taking a cab from one of the hotels around Playa del Coco in northwestern Guanacaste Province. If you were desperate.

Golf in Costa Rica-Papagayo Golf and Country Club

Bob Cullen — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:21:33 +0000

The downhill, par-three second at Papagayo: 103 yards to a tiny green

I have long loved finding a good golf course that’s out-of-the way and little known–a hidden gem. I still get a warm feeling when I think about courses like Strathlene, in Scotland, or Ardglass in Northern Ireland. So I was eager to like the Papagayo Golf and Country Club in the little town of Libertad, Costa Rica.

It qualifies as obscure. It will forever be overshadowed by the Four Seasons Resort at Papagayo, a neighbor in the northwestern quadrant of Costa Rica’s Pacific province of Guanacaste.

Appropriately, there's a cemetery beyond the third green

And it certainly qualifies as out-of-the-way. As I got into Libertad, my GPS directed me off the pavement and onto a rutted dirt road that took me past small, pastel-colored, concrete Costa Rican houses. Then it told me to turn right onto a much narrower dirt road. Ahead of me, I saw a sign that said, “No Hay Paso,” which is, I think, Spanish for “You’d be a foolish tourist to continue, no matter what your GPS is telling you.”

Being foolish, I continued. Ahead of me, a Costa Rican man drove a dozen cattle into the dirt road, flicking at them with a crop. Behind them, I could see that the road descended to a stream–that ran over the road. I watched as a couple of calves balked at entering the stream, mooing piteously. And I decided that if it wasn’t passable for cattle, I’d better back up.

Fortunately, my trusty GPS regained its bearings, and a couple of dirt roads later, directed me through the gate at Papagayo Golf & C.C. I parked in a nearly empty lot next to an Astroturf putting green and a deserted practice range.

I walked toward the clubhouse and was greeted by a tall young man with a buzz-cut, wearing a tee-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. He introduced himself as David Lee Smith, the professional.

“Good golfer, David?” I asked.

“Learning,” he said.

The Costa Rican dream: a winter home behind the green at No. 8

The golf course, he told me, was owned by two Montanans, David Reynolds and Michael Mills. They also designed it. It’s a rustic place on what was recently ranch land, designed to host North American expats and tourists in nearby resort towns like Playa Coco. According to the scorecard, it played a shade over 6,000 yards. Although the sign on the road said it was “U.S.G.A. Certified,” there was neither rating nor slope on the card.

Smith informed me that my green fee would be $100, including a cart with a cooler of ice and a bottle of water. It seemed steep for a basic, country golf course that would likely charge about $35 in the United States. But, as Smith pointed out, the other courses in the immediate area, at the Four Seasons Papagayo, at Reserva Conchal, and at Hacienda Pinilla, charged from $180-225. Golf is a market-driven sport; owners charge what they think the market will bear. Juding from the number of players I saw on my Saturday morning round, the market is telling Papagayo, “No thanks.”

The reasons for the market’s verdict began becoming evident when I got to the first tee. The turf underneath me was a mixed patch of closely mowed grasses and weeds. It was mostly brown. I hit a three-wood into the fairway and it caromed up a slope, suggesting that the ground was hard and getting harder under the Costa Rican sun. When I set up to pitch to the green, I saw verdant grass for the first time. It looked as if Papagayo spared its water for the putting surfaces–and not much of that. The green was tiny, perhaps 10 paces across, with a few bare patches.

Bouganvillea off the ninth fairway

The third hole made a strong case for the advisability of hiring professionals to design golf courses. Like the first two, it was built on and around the sides of a steep hill. The fairway slopes sharply from left to right. Since the ground is hard, balls that hit the fairway kick right, nto tall grass and scrubby bushes. On top of that, the fairway rises gradually nearly all the way to the green, meaning that the second shot is essentially blind. And the green is roughly the size of the computer screen you’re using to read this. There is a cemetery beyond the third green, and it was difficult to decide which group was having more fun–the people on the golf course or the people in the graveyard.

And so it went. It might have been laughable if it weren’t for that $100 green fee. When a course charges that kind of money, it ought to provide a first-class golf experience. Paqagayo Golf and Country Club doesn’t. I wanted to like it. I just couldn’t.

Golf in Costa Rica-Reserva Conchal

Bob Cullen — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:47:44 +0000

Going for the 18th green in two at Reserva Conchal

The first thing to know about Costa Rica’s Reserva Conchal Golf Club is that it’s hard to play there. Not that the course is exceptionally difficult. It’s just an ordeal to get on.

Call for a tee time and you’ll be informed that Reserva Conchal is a private club and allows non-members to play only if there is space available. There’s a pause and then–why, Heavens to Betsy–you’re in luck. You may be able to play. And at just the time you wanted, 8:30 on Saturday morning.

But first, you have to send an email to the pro shop, repeating your oral request. I’m not sure why this is so. Perhaps the club wants to Google your name and see if you’re on any terrorism watch lists. Perhaps it wants to run a credit check to determine whether you’re worth enough to drop a real estate salesman into your group. But you send the email and you get a response from the pro shop confirming your time.

The duffer-friendly hole location on No. 5

You’re still not on the golf course, though. The next day you arrive at the gates to Reserva Conchal and the turnpike is down. The guard insists on seeing your driver’s license and checking your name against a list he keeps on a clipboard. He checks. He calls. And magically, the turnpike rises.

You drive in. The grounds are carefully tended, planted with grasses and flowering shrubs. By the road, occasionally, you see yellow warning signs with silhouettes of Costa Rican wildlife, like iguanas and monkeys. This lets you know that despite the construction crews busily tearing up monkey and iguana habitat to build more condos, the owners of Reserva Conchal are eco-friendly.

Still not friendly to visiting golfers, though. There’s no bag drop at the clubhouse parking lot. You have to schlep your bag yourself, down a steep little concrete path to the staging area. Then you walk into the clubhouse, where your lack of membership is forgiven in return for a $180 swipe of your credit card. But there’s no locker room to change your shoes. You sit on a little bench in the pro shop and slip on your cleats.

All of which is a shame, really, because the pleasure of playing a fine course shouldn’t be marred by management that makes a player feel like a vacuum-cleaner salesman banging on the door of Buckingham Palace. And Reserva Conchal is definitely a fine course. The turf is smooth, almost flawless. The greens are quick. The practice area is lavishly endowed, with a grass-tee range and several practice greens for working on different chips and pitches. And–surprise!–there aren’t many people playing.

Lots for sale by the 13th fairway at Reserva Conchal

The design, by Robert Trent Jones II, offers enough challenge to make a winter resort course interesting. But it’s not so tough that play slows down. Jones got some hilly ground to work with, about a quarter of a mile inland from the beach at Playa Conchal. He responded the way any classic architect would, using the high spots for tees and greens and putting fairways in the valleys. Players at Reserva Conchal will see a lot of downhill tee shots and a lot of uphill approaches. (They won’t see the beach, though. Beachfront property apparently is destined for higher uses at Reserva Conchal.)

Forced carries are mild. There’s water in front of the first green, for instance, but it’s a drivable par four, so even short hitters need only a wedge to clear the hazard. At No. 5, a par three, hole locations on the right side of the green require a carry over water, but there are duffer-friendly areas on the left side of the green where the water is not in play.

The signature hole (you can tell because they have a sign by the tee that says “Signature Hole”) is No. 12, a dogleg right par four that plays 435 yards from the back tees. The tee shot has to carry a wooded ravine, then find a fairway that sits below a massive condo building. The uphill approach must carry several bunkers and hold a shallow green.

The most enjoyable hole may be the 18th, a risk-reward par five. A lagoon (lined by casita homes) runs down the left side of the hole. A line off the tee that carries at least some of the water sets the player up to try to reach the green in two. But the second shot will be almost entirely over water. There is, of course, an overland route for the player willing to spend three shots to reach the green.

The course plays 7,021 yards from the back tees, with a rating of 74.9 and a slope of 137. It has blue, white and red tees as well.

Reserva Conchal is near Brasilito and Tamarindo on the western edge of Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. The property encompasses a Westin hotel, and guests there can presumably get on with less hassle than outsiders.

Golf in Costa Rica-Hacienda Pinilla

Bob Cullen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:53:25 +0000

A birdie putt on No. 15 with seabirds and Pacific breakers as a backdrop.

A golfer at Costa Rica’s Hacienda Pinilla should expect surprises. There might be a howler monkey bellowing in a big tree overhanging the 9th tee. There might be cowboys rounding up cattle in a bit of ranchland between the 12th green and the 13th tee. But the biggest surprise is likely to be the wind. For some reason, Hacienda Pinilla is one of the windiest courses I’ve seen outside of Scotland or Ireland.

The wind made its presence felt on the practice range, before my round began. It flattened my shorts and shirt against my body. It mocked my practice shots, bending them from left to right and back at me. It seemed to add three or four clubs to a 150-yard shot.

A howler monkey hangs in a tree over the 9th tee at Hacienda Pinilla

“Is it always this windy?” I asked a member warming up nearby.

“No,” he said, leaning into a 7-iron.”Usually it’s stronger.”

The wind gusted and knocked my golf bag over.

“Now it’s blowing!” the member said.

Fortunately for players at Hacienda Pinilla, designer Mike Young got a lot of land to work with, and he built very wide fairways. If he hadn’t, it might take a half dozen balls to finish a round. But even though it’s fairly easy to keep the ball in play, Hacienda Pinilla is going to test a player’s wind game. Can he work the ball against a quartering wind? Can he hit it low into the wind? Can he tee it high and take advantage on a downwind par five? And most of all, can he keep the wind out of his head? Can he pick a club, see his shot, and hit it confidently, even if the wind is gusting or dying down?

It’s an exhilarating challenge, and it’s one of the reasons why Hacienda Pinilla is en exhilarating golf course.

It’s set midway along the coast of the Nicoya Peninsula, close to Pacific Ocean beach towns and fishing villages like Playa Tamarindo and Brasilito. The foothills of the Central American cordillera surround the course, but they’re not in it. The land in its natural state is fairly flat, with brown grasses more reminiscent of a prairie than a jungle. Cattle ranches are neighbors. But there are no close neighbors. The golf course is in the middle of a gated, 4,500-acre enclave that in early 2012 had a hotel and some widely scattered private villas. Someday, the property may be crammed with homes and people, but thanks in part to the Great Recession, it presently contains a lot more iguanas than people.

Two of Hacienda Pinilla’s holes, the par-five 14th and the par-three 15th, abut the Pacific. They’re the ones that are likely to be pictured on the course’s web site. But while they’re good holes, they’re not the best that Young designed.

Roundup between the 12th green and 13th tee

Short, strategic par fours are often the best indicator of design quality and Hacienda Pinilla has a great one, the 10th. It’s a dogleg from right to left, measuring 363 yards from the backs tees, 337 and 307 from the tees mortal men are likely to use, and 233 from the ladies’ tees. The land rises from the tee as the fairway turns to the left. But about 240 yards out from the back tees it abruptly drops down into a gulley that plays as a water hazard. A big hitter might try to cut the dogleg and reach the green from the tee, but it’s a gamble, because misses will be severely penalized. The successful, precise layup shot off the tee leaves a wedge approach, but it’s trickly, because of the wind and the fact that the kdiney-shaped green is segmented into three tiers, with a deep bunker guarding the back and middle tiers. If the wind blows a ball onto the wrong tier, the player may not even be able to putt directly at the hole.

The toughest hole on the course is the 17th, a par four of 441 yards from the back tees. It’s tighter than most holes at Hacienda Pinilla, although an irrigation pond to the right of the tee is not really in play. The prevailing wind blows from the elft nito a player’s face. He has to aim toward a fairway bunker and trust the wind to push the ball into the fairway.The long second shot is tough because of the quartering wind and the fact that the green is very narrow, especially with a forward hole location.

The course is very well groomed. Fairways and tees are plush. The greens are cut tightly and they’re fast, fast enough that the wind becomes a factor in how far putts roll and how much they break. The course has an excellent practice area with grass tees and several chipping and oputting greens. It measures 7,296 yards from the back tees, with a rating of 75.7 and a hefty slope of 132.

Hacienda Pinilla currently accepts outside play. There’s an inn, La Posada, on the property and an affiliation with a nearby JW Marriott Resort.

The green complex at No. 4 has a ranch feel

Golf in Costa Rica-La Iguana

Bob Cullen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:00:50 +0000

La Iguana's namesake lizard watches play at No. 16

Playing golf on the La Iguana course in Playa Herradura, Costa Rica is like listening to a violin recital by a five-year-old. Close your eyes and you’re not going to mistake the kid for Jascha Heifetz. But with your eyes open, you’ve got to admit that it’s remarkable someone that size can even lift a violin, much less produce music on it.

That’s the nature of golf in the tropics, and of La Iguana. No one’s likely to confuse a course in Costa Rica with Pine Valley. But given the climate and the terrain, it’s pleasantly surprising that a reasonable golf course can exist at all. And La Iguana is quite a reasonable golf course.

The green at No. 17

It’s located on the edge of the Pacific, in a place where the land abruptly meets the sea. Just a little ways from a beach the color of coffee grounds, the terrain becomes steeply mountainous; the mountains, by nature, are covered with thick, tropical forest. It’s a place that wants to support an infinite variety of aggressive plants and animals. It’s not a place that’s naturally hospitable to a golf course, which by definition involves planting and nurturing turf grass and keeping nearly everything else at bay.

But Costa Rica, by virtue of its warm weather, friendly people and dazzling natural resources, has become an increasingly popular winter destination for Yanks who want something a bit less spoiled and more exotic than Sarasota or Scottsdale. And where large numbers of North American (and European) tourists go, three things are likely to follow: golf, condominiums and the Marriott Corporation.

La Iguana is the centerpiece of precisely this resort triad. There’s a big Marriott hotel, the Los Suenos Resort. There are condominiums lining several of the golf holes, with lots of land to build more if the economy ever recovers. The golf course exists to draw customers to the hotel and buyers to the condominiums.

It’s all part of an enclave separated by gate and fence from the country surrounding it. Down the road a few miles is the beach town of Jaco, which can be either charming or sleazy, depending on the visitor’s opinion of things like backpackers, surfers, loose joints and beachside biker bars. Closer to the resort gates, Playa Herradura has a couple of good open-air restaurants, a shopping center for the gringos, and a fair number of folks who pitch tents and camp on the beach. Inside the walls, it might be Palm Springs.

You're not allowed to go into the woods, but why would you want to?

The golf course, designed by Ted Robinson, Jr., had to be fitted between condos, the hotel, the beach and the mountains. The first four holes climb steadily through a narrow valley that was once covered in forest. The next five holes turn around and head back. Robinson built a double green to serve both No. 3, going up, and No. 5, coming back down. The second nine has two loops. Nos. 10-14 go up and back a neighboring valley to the front nine’s. The last four holes are on flat land near the beach. The green at No. 17 offers a view out to sea.

The course isn’t easy. According to the scorecard, it’s rated at 73.4 with a slope of 145 from the back tees, which play to 6,698 yards. I’m not sure of the provenance of that rating, but the challenge at La Iguana is formidable. Though Robinson carved out ample playing corridors, the penalty for straying from them is severe. A ball in the woods is gone. There are Audubon sanctuary signs asking players to keep out of the woods, but they hardly matter. A player is more likely to find a foraging coati than a lost ball. On most holes, there isn’t a lot of strategy. Just hit the ball straight.

The pleasure of playing such a layout comes in part from the natural elements that impinge on it. Woodpeckers and hummingbirds with irridescent green plumage flit by. Birds squawk in the woods as if they were criticizing an errant shot. The course’s namesake iguanas bask in the sun by the 16th hole.

But with the tropical setting come some limits. The turf is a common, slightly scraggly Bermuda. The greens are coarse and grainy. A couple of them show signs that it’s not easy maintaining short grass in the shadows of a rain forest. One hole, the first, was closed when I played, because the green area was being re-built. Players were advised to start on the back nine, then bypass No. 1, giving themselves a par five for the inconvenience.

The fourth green, in the shadow of the rain forest

The staff at La Iguana does a good job with the amenities–cleaning clubs, proffering iced towels, delivering sandwiches to order on the course. But the golf carts are equipped with the most annoying GPS system I have encountered. It’s not content with providing the standard visual of yardages and hole locations. It’s also got an anodyne voice that turns itself on as the cart glides up to each hole and puts exactly the wrong thoughts into the player’s head. “Don’t hit it out of bounds on the left, or into the lake on the right,” the voice might say. Or, “This is a difficult hole.” Or “This is a tough par three with bunkers surrounding the green.”

Though I looked, there did not appear to be an off switch for this voice. If it had been a caddie, I’d have fired him.

When I evaluate courses in exotic and scenic locations, I try to apply what I call “the Kansas test,” as in, “If Pebble Beach were in the middle of Kansas, with wheat fields replacing the Pacific Ocean, what would people think of it?” Based on the Kansas test, I’d have to say La Iguana is decent, but not extraordinary.

Then again, Costa Rica is not Kansas. You can play golf at La Iguana, then take a hike through a tropical forest and see a scarlet macaw. You can watch the sun set over the Pacific from an open air restaurant with fresh, delicious seafood. In those circumstances, hanging around and playing another round or two at La Iguana begins to seem much more appealing.

The Top Five Plays in Washington

Bob Cullen — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:05:48 +0000

Old prison buildings form the backdrop for Laurel Hill, best of Washington's public courses.

There was a time when a golfer visiting Washington needed one thing above all: a friend who belonged to a country club. Playing public golf in the nation’s capital was like watching a congressional committee mark up a tax bill. The process was crowded, slow and not very attractive.

But while Congress has, against all odds, gotten worse recently, things have changed for the better on the Washington golf scene.

Indeed, for a golfer visiting Washington, this is a golden age. In the past decade or so, half a dozen or more first-rate daily fee golf courses have opened in the metropolitan area. They’ve encountered economic headwinds–a recession and a general stagnation in American golf rounds. But that’s all to the good for the visiting player. Tee times aren’t hard to come by, and the competition keeps prices affordable—usually under $100 and sometimes quite a bit lower than that.

Pitching to the 13th green at Westfields, Washington's No. 1A.

So here’s my list of the Top Five public golf courses in the Washington area. Rating golf courses is like rating restaurants. One diner’s delectable sushi is another diner’s inedible raw fish. And one golfer’s favorite course might not appeal to another golfer. But I think most Washington area golfers would agree that the five courses on my list, while not necessarily all in their own personal top fives, are excellent tracks. They’re good designs, thoughtfully laid into interesting terrain. There’s great variety within each collection of 18 holes. They’re well kept, with plush fairways, immaculate greens and full-service practice facilities. Their staffs are, for the most part, efficient and welcoming. Several of them are graced by an interesting historical note—the guard towers from an old penitentiary, or stone ruins of an old farm house. They’re all about 20-25 miles from the center of Washington and they’re all well worth playing.

1. Laurel Hill, Lorton, Va. The venue for the 2013 U.S. Public Links championship was built on land that once belonged to the District of Columbia’s penitentiary. The prison closed in 2001, and incarceration’s loss became golf’s gain. Architect Bill Love laid out a big, challenging golf course that’s part of the Fairfax County park system. It makes wise use of some steep elevation changes, with holes running dramatically up or down hillsides. But it’s the greens that make Laurel Hill the area’s best. They’re slick and smooth and you’d better figure out the correct place to land your approach shot if you want to make par. The only complaint I’ve heard about Laurel Hill is that the indifferent staff seems to have been trained in a government bureaucracy. For my full review, click here.

1A. Westfields, Clifton, Va. The factors separating Westfields from the top spot are greens and topography. The course is built on an essentially flat piece of ground. The design team of Fred Couples and Gene Bates had to use bulldozers to create most of the contours. And the greens aren’t quite as slippery or confounding as Laurel Hill’s. But those are marginal differences. Westfields is a course that requires both power and finesse, and it’s well-conditioned. It’s also got a friendly, accommodating staff, a factor that just about balances the slight difference in the golf courses. So it’s No. 1A on my list. For my full review, click here.

Choose your path around the ruins on the closing hole at Whiskey Creek.

3.

Whiskey Creek, Ijamsville, Md. Three good courses opened up a decade or so ago at the end of the I-270 corridor in suburban Maryland: Whiskey Creek, P.B. Dye and Worthington Manor. Whiskey Creek is the best of the three. It’s a Michael Poellot-Ernie Els design built on the slopes of a steep ridge that was once, legend has it, the site of an illicit distillery. The course confronts the player with some intriguing choices. There are alternate routes on the par-five 9^th and 18^th holes. The gambler who chooses the more hazardous path and hits it long and straight is rewarded with birdie opportunities. There are some good panoramas from the higher elevations, and the fifth hole could be used as a hang-gliding park. For my full review, click here.

The 8th green at Lake Presidential, guarded by sand and water.

4. Lake Presidential, Upper Marlboro, Md. Landmark Land, the developer of Kiawah Island and other first-class properties, presents the best course in Prince George’s County, to the east of Washington. The eponymous lake is a 30-acre dammed stream, and the routing takes advantage of it with three memorable holes—Nos. 8, 9 and 18. But the proof of this course’s quality is a couple of short par fours, the 11^th and 17^th, that are sporty and fun. The course’s only flaw is the development that is growing around it. You’ll hear construction sounds as you play and you’ll get a look at lots of design ideas for houses and condos. For my full review, click here.

5. Blue Mash, Laytonsville, Md. The operators of this Arthur Hills design have a revolutionary concept: golf is supposed to be fun. To that end, they’ve created a year-round series of special events, from speed golf at dawn (the players run) to night golf, in costumes, at Hallowe’en (the balls glow in the dark). That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of good old standard golf available at Blue Mash. There is. For my full review, click here.

I could have done a Top Ten, filling it with names like Worthington Manor and Augustine, without giving anyone a bum steer. And for those willing to go farther into exurbia, there are excellent choices like Cannon Ridge, near Fredericksburg, Va., and Maryland National, out past Frederick. The Washington area will never be Pinehurst. But it’s become a destination that justifies paying an airline fee for transporting your golf clubs.

If only fixing Congress were as easy.

Old Trail: Waste of a Good Pasture

Bob Cullen — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:51:10 +0000

Teeing off on no. 8 at Old Trail, with the Blue Ridge in the background.

If someone were reviewing me, I certainly wouldn’t want him to see me as I am early on some misbegotten Sunday mornings—rumpled and bleary-eyed, dressed in a ratty bathrobe, buried in the newspaper and grumpy until the second cup of coffee kicks in.

So I am a bit reluctant to judge Old Trail Golf Club in Crozet, Virginia after playing it on a chilly, windy, November day, not long after the greens had been aerated. The fairways are brown in November, as they should be, because the course uses a strain of grass that goes dormant in late autumn and doesn’t green up again till late spring. And no course looks its best with brown fairways.

But there’s no avoiding my opinion. Old Trail spoiled a perfectly good pasture.

Looking for a ball amid fallen leaves on Old Trail's 11th.

The course opened about six years ago on a piece of erstwhile farm land, just as the double whammy of recession and overbuilding was about to sock the golf industry. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Old Trail bears the marks of an inadequate maintenance effort. The tees are pockmarked with dirt spots. Golf carts have worn rutted paths where grass ought to be. The bunkers have an odd mix of sands that give them the look of a Starbucks latte—white with patches of brown. The golf course was designed to look a little ragged, with low-lying wet areas left naturally unkempt. Neglect has turned ragged into scruffy.

And only neglect can account for some of what I encountered. There were no red tee markers on the par-three second hole. Someone must have forgotten to put them down. So the female member of my foursome just skipped that hole. A particularly scrofulous flock of Canada geese has apparently taken up residence on the 10^th green. The 11^th and 12^th holes are cut through a wooded portion of the property, but the maintenance staff apparently can’t cope with the falling leaves. Leaves covered so much of the 11^th fairway that it was hard to see grass. My group lost three golf balls. Someone wanted a drink of water on the 14^th tee. The canister had no cups. And so it went.

Then there’s the course itself. Several holes struck me as ill-conceived. On the par-four fifth, the tee shot has to clear a scraggly patch of trees to hit the main section of the fairway. Play away from the trees and you’re in a pond. Two of the par threes, No. 7 and No. 14, are just stuck on flat, almost featureless patches of ground. They’re as interesting as your old high school classmate who went to work for the phone company.

Geese peck at Old Trail's 10th green.

Old Trail has one beautiful feature in the autumn, and that is the slopes of the Blue Ridge, which rise to the west. They’re red and yellow when the leaves turn. But if you appreciate the Blue Ridge, it’s hard to be happy about Old Trail’s existence.

The course was conceived as part of an enormous real estate development in what once was the rural hamlet of Crozet, about 15 miles west of Charlottesville. Crozet used to be known primarily for a plant that made TV dinners. Then it was the headquarters of the Dave Mathews Band. But Charlottesville is an attractive town, too much so for its own good. Housing prices near the University of Virginia rose beyond the means of professors and university staff. Charlottesville sprawled, north toward Ruckersville and west toward Crozet.

Old Trail is a sprawl engine, the centerpiece of what seems to be an endless chain of houses and townhouses. Soon, it seems, the Blue Ridge itself will be engulfed. And the quality of life that attracted people to the Charlottesville area in the first place will be extinguished by traffic, strip malls and condos. Old Trail is part of that process.

The worst thing is it’s too late to start over. Once the golf course and the condos go in, the farms never come back.

On the bright side, Old Trail is inexpensive. I only paid $29, which is the winter twilight rate. But you get what you pay for.

Westfields: Whistling Past the Graveyard

Bob Cullen — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:51:27 +0000

Hitting to the long, par-three 3rd at Westfields

The way I’ve been playing golf lately, you’d think the last thing I’d want to see during a round would be a graveyard. The symbolism is too obvious. The final resting place of my single digit handicap. The ultimate destination of my hopes for a score in the 70s. The retirement address I edge closer to with every yard that drops off my average drive.

So you’d think that I’d have little use for a golf course with a small graveyard marked off by rocks beside the fairway on the—wait for it—13^th hole.

But I do like Westfields, which has the aforementioned hallowed ground. That’s a testament to the quality of the golf course, which I rate as one of the two best daily fee options in the Washington area. The Westfields golf course might rank a shade behind Laurel Hill in terms of natural terrain, design and turf maintenance. But Westfields, which is in Clifton, Virginia, not far from Dulles International Airport, is much better at customer service. They’re really Nos. 1 and 1A.

Historic area sign on No. 13. The nearest point of relief from this hazard may be heaven.

Fred Couples gets a design credit for Westfields; the back tees are called the “Boom Boom” tees in his honor. But Couples works with the professional architects at the Bates Design Group; Gene Bates and his father-in-law, Ron Kirby, have resumes that include stints with Dick Wilson, Robert Trent Jones Senior and Jack Nicklaus’s design company. Those bloodlines show through at Westfields.

It’s a polished design, with the hole corridors cut through stands of mature woods and accented by big, handsome, scalloped bunkers. The turf, with a few exceptions, is lush. The ground probably lacked contour in its natural state, but bulldozers worked skillfully and the course’s humps and hollows look almost natural. Best of all, from an esthetic standpoint, the only house you’re likely to see at Westfields is the clubhouse. There are not, as yet, any of the condo canyons or McMansions that line so many contemporary layouts.

The design has a bit of everything, from long holes requiring Couples-style power to short finesse holes that invite a gamble. It starts innocuously enough, with a couple of medium-length par fours. But the third hole is a brute, a par three over water that plays 223 yards from the Boom Booms. If the player tries to play to the slightly safer, right-hand side, he might hit the green but he could very well three-putt. Several more holes require lots of power: the 6^thplays from 473 yards and the 8^th from 467. The finishing hole is a long par four, curving right, where the second shot has to carry a wetland near the green.

A boy, with his mother caddying, chips to the 9th hole at Westfields.

I was more taken by some of the sporty, finesse holes on the course. No. 14 is a drivable but risky par four, only 250 yards from the white markers. But the player who goes for it had better be precise. Woods, marsh and sand await a drive that’s not far and sure. I also liked No. 13, the graveyard hole. The construction of the golf course uncovered an unmarked burial site that is believed to date from the Civil War. The builders covered it over, built a low rock wall to bound it, and laid the fairway around it. No. 13 is a short par four with a downhill second shot. The green complex features big, deep bunkers and steep slopes that will punish a mishit pitch.

Overall, Westfields is 6,897 yards long with a slope of 136 from the tips.

The web site for the club, www.westfieldsgolf.com, has the epigram “Public golf kept private.” The idea is that the Westfields golfer gets to feel like a private club member. Actually, the service is better than it is at a lot of private clubs I’ve been to. The staff goes out of its way to be polite, friendly and welcoming. There’s a cost to this service—the green fees at Westfields range from $109 on summer weekends to $49 in the dead of winter.

That’s high for the Washington area, where most folks make do on modest, government-scale salaries and are loathe to pay a green fee higher than the course rating. You wouldn’t know that during a political campaign season, where candidates like to say that everyone in Washington is a dumb spendthrift who’s too well-paid, but it’s true. The good news is that the folks at Westfields seem to feel that they have to justify their premium price by providing a great golfing experence. And they do.

Laurel Hill: Jailbreak

Bob Cullen — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:01:12 +0000

Putting on the 13th at Laurel Hill, guard tower in the background

From 1916 to 2001, spending time in Lorton was not good for a Washingtonian’s reputation. That was when the District of Columbia’s penitentiary was located in Lorton, about 20 miles south of the capital at a railroad crossing in Virginia farm country.

But all that has changed. Back in 2001, the penitentiary closed. It and 1,000 surrounding acres were returned to Fairfax County for public use. A high school was built. Parkland was set aside. And a golf course was designed by Bill Love, with several holes in the shadow of guard towers from the old prison, left intact for history’s sake.

Nowadays, Lorton is the site for what just might be the best daily fee golf course in the Washington area, Laurel Hill, which opened in 2008. Doing time at Lorton now might mean honing your game for the U.S. Public Links championship, which will be held there in 2013.

Hitting to the par-three 16th

When the U.S.G.A. picks a new golf course to host a national championship, it’s a sign of quality; the boys from Far Hills, N.J. are not in the habit of holding competitions on goat tracks. And after playing Laurel Hill, it’s easy to see what the attraction was.

Laurel Hill is a long, imaginative, and beautifully conditioned golf course. The fairways are plush. The greens are smooth and very fast. There’s currently lots of room to play off the tees, although some well-placed bunkers can cause problems if the drive goes off line. But when the rough expands, as it doubtless will before 2013, Laurel Hill is going to be challenging indeed.

That’s because the Laurel Hill greens complexes can make life hard for even the longest hitters. The golfer needs to keep his ball below the hole. Downhill putts are tough to stop anywhere near the hole. Missing a green and leaving a chip that runs downhill to the hole courts a bogey, perhaps a double.

Take, for instance, the par four third hole, which plays 452 yards from the back tees and 423 from the whites. It’s all uphill. The green has a severe tier that separates the back third from the rest. Putting from the bottom to the top is delicate—a ball hit not quite hard enough will roll back to the front of the green. Putting from the top to a pin cut on the bottom, it may be impossible to stop a ball near the hole.

Then there’s the 14th, an uphill par three that plays at 218 yards from the back markers. It’s tough to hit a long iron high enough to make a ball check up on the front portion of the green. But a putt struck from the back tier can easily roll off the green and back down the fairway.

The drivable but dangerous par-four 7th hole

The 14th is typical of the elevation changes on the property. There are long, uphill holes requiring power and downhill holes requiring judgment and finesse. On No. 4, a par three of 188 yards, the green is so far below the tee that it can be tough to select the right club. I hit what I thought was a 160-yard club to a pin 172 yards away and air-mailed the green.

But even though double-bogeys littered my card, I enjoyed playing Laurel Hill and would gladly go back. With green fees ranging from $89 on summer weekends to as little as $34 in the winter, it’s affordable. There are also seasonal memberships that make sense for people who live nearby and can play it a lot.

Laurel Hill is so good that its only flaws are really errors of management, not of design or maintenance. The single worst decision may have to do with the design of the scorecard. Laurel Hill has five sets of tees–black, blue, white, gold and red. At 6,021 total yards, the gold tees are probably the correct choice for the average golfer. But the gold tee figures are placed at the bottom of the card along with the red tees, leading the typical male golfer to deduce—incorrectly—that the gold tees are only for players with skirts. Joe Average will likely be overmatched playing the white tees at 6,386 yards, and his pace of play will reflect that. But his masculinity will be intact.

And the customer service! There isn’t so much as a Porta Potty anywhere on the course; maybe the management thinks females can relieve themselves in the bushes. There wasn’t any drinking water available on the day I played, either. Maybe the management thinks that if it’s not going to provide toilets, it’s merciful not to provide water.

But, hey, guys. I suspect that even in solitary confinement, Lorton gave prisoners a toilet and an occasional drink. Laurel Hill should do no less.

Lake Presidential: One of Washington’s Best

Bob Cullen — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:45:01 +0000

Hitting from the 150-yard white tees at no. 9 on Lake Presidential

No president, as far as I know, has teed it up at Maryland’s Lake Presidential since it opened in 2008, despite the invitation inherent in the name. But the president, who can play pretty much wherever he wants, would find it a worthy challenge. Lake Presidential is one of the best daily fee courses in the Washington area.

The story behind Lake Presidential is a long one. Years ago, Greg Norman did a routing for the property, which lies about 2o miles east of the White House in the Prince George’s County seat of Upper Marlboro. A stream was dammed to create a 30-acre lake, and the lake was given a name calculated to appeal to home buyers.

It took a long time for some legal and financial complexities to get sorted out. By the time they were, Landmark Land, the developers of Kiawah Island and other properties, controlled the course. The design was completed by its in-house team of architects.

Whoever is ultimately responsible deserves a lot of credit. Lake Presidential is an imaginative and challenging golf course with tremendous variety in its 7,230 yards. It’s tough, too, with a slope of 141 from the tips. The U.S.G.A. picked it for an Open qualifier in 2011, and the course hosted the Maryland women’s amateur the same summer.

The approach to No. 7, with water on the right

Three of the most memorable holes play around the lake. No. 8 is a 570-yard par five with the lake flanking its right side. The green is build atop a small peninsula that juts into the water. Hitting the green is a challenge from 100 yards. Hitting it with your second shot would make for a career fairway wood.

No. 9 is another lakeside hole, a par three that can play anywhere from 225 to 120 yards. The shot to the green has to carry over the lake and it must not be sliced or pushed, since the lake also guards the right side of the green. But bailing out to the left doesn’t help much, because two pot bunkers wait to swallow up the supposedly safe shot, leaving an explosion to the green with the lake just beyond.

The lake is largely ornamental on No. 18, a closing par five that plays anywhere from 515 to 320 yards. It sits in front of the tee, but the carry is less demanding than it looks—maybe 180 yards from the back tees. The lake might come into play on a long, pulled second shot, but most golfers won’t notice it until their round is over.

Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to build picturesque holes around a lake. The quality of Lake Presidential shines through on some of the imaginative holes on the rest of the course. I liked No. 7, a par four that plays 445 yards from the back. A creek runs along the hole and splits the fairway. On the drive, most players need to stay right of it and on the second shot, they need to stay left. A truly long hitter can try to shorten the hole by blasting a 300-yard shot over the creek and the little cart bridge that crosses it, landing, he hopes, on the second segment of the fairway.

No. 11 is an ingenious, short par four with an uphill tee shot and bunkers in the middle of the line of play. It pays to challenge and carry them, because the green is set on a pedestal and it’s extremely shallow. If you pitch to it with any club longer than a wedge, it’s very hard to hold.

No. 17 is another short par four, with a green tucked in a dell defended by a couple of bunkers and some steep mounding. The second shot brings to mind some Scottish links courses where the best way to hit the green is to miss it and let the ball carom off a slope and roll onto the putting surface.

The 17th green invites a carom off the slope on the left

The only hole on the golf course whose design I question is No. 5, a long, dogleg left par four. The tee shot must be placed perfectly on the right side of the fairway, staying short of a creek that crosses about 280 yards out. You can hit the left side of the fairway, but you can’t see the green from there due to a woodland with towering trees that runs along the left side of the hole and impinges on the corner. Hitting the fairway and having to play a long draw to a green you can’t see may not strike most players as fair. But, of course, there is no rule that golf has to be fair.

There’s another element to Lake Presidential that might not be to every player’s taste: housing. When the course opened, there were houses visible on three or four holes. A few years later, they line several more. If the sound of trucks and bulldozers building new streets is any indication, they’ll soon line more.

But, hey. Houses line Pebble Beach, too. Lake Presidential has very reasonable green fees for a course of its caliber—never more than $100 and sometimes lower than half that, depending on the season, the day of the week and the time of day. There’s a range with grass tees and a spacious clubhouse. Using someone’s Palladian window as an aim point for the occasional tee shot isn’t so onerous when it’s part of such a bargain.