7th hole at Laurel Hill Golf Club, Virginia

Take a look at Laurel Hill Golf Club in general and you may well ask what it's doing in a Golfweek list of best municipal courses.

Bill Love's sympathetic lay-out looks as well groomed as many country clubs and while its elegance and popularity may have given some of the staff an inflated sense of their own importance, the calibre of its holes cannot be questioned.

I may well sing the 18th's praises at some point but for now, I'm focusing on a pet topic with many golfers; the short par four, perfectly embodied by Laurel Hill's 321-yard 7th:

"The tee shot needs to be well placed to avoid a series of bunkers on both sides of the narrow landing area. The green, one of the smallest on the course, is elevated and protected on three sides by several deep bunkers and grass hollows. Approach shots have to be carefully judged for distance and accuracy if a player wants a chance at birdie. The shortness of the hole tempts the longer hitters to try for the green in one, but players should not underestimate the difficulty of the hole and challenge of recovery shots if they miss the green"

Familiar themes here, not least the fact that the further you want to fly your tee shot down the fairway to the left of the green, the narrower and more trappy the landing area becomes.

The real masterstroke is that sliver of fairway on the right, immediately in front of the green, however. Here's how it looks from the tee. Replace that sliver with more sand or rough and going for the green with your tee-shot becomes merely theoretical for the vast majority of golfers. Leave the sliver as it is, on the other hand, and with a following wind, a whole lot more Daly wannabes are going to be tempted. Hell, even if you don't get it quite right, you can still get lucky and find the short grass.

Congratulations are also in order for the club website, whose combination of clear illustrations and relevant, informative photography advertises the course perfectly and puts many supposedly grander clubs to shame.


Cheap factor: Super-twilight green fee in prime season to $44
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Away from Planet Cheap: 

• North Myrtle Beach welcomes Cape Fear National Golf Club to the fold..."With over 1500 linear feet of bridges, dramatic waterfalls, ponds and strategically placed rock walls, Cape Fear National will not only be challenging but visually stunning". Possibly the first time I've seen "strategically placed rock walls" used as a selling point. Are we meant to be playing the caroms now?

•  Golf Obsessions has discovered a new golf course illustrator

• Good to see Poland getting on the map, care of Gary Player's design at Modry Las Golf Club. It looks both eminently playable and easy on the eye and maybe the natural, raggedy bunker look currently in vogue isn't Player's thing but I just wonder if it would have sat more easily in a north European setting than the manicured country club look

• And finally, ten years on...
  

 To absent friends...

[pic courtesy of deltaMike]