14th at Yeaman's Hall Club, South Carolina

Tom Doak refreshing a Seth Raynor course is like Michael Buble covering a Tony Bennett number: lovers of the original can at least feel their guy's work is in safe hands.

Such was the case when Doak got to work eleven years ago on what is regarded as one of Raynor's greatest legacies, Yeamans Hall Club; re-honing edges that had become dulled with time to put fresh life into its greens while preserving the course's venerable, unaffected look.

Still largely true to the 1925 original, the 430-yard 14th is just a more challenging tee shot away from being all-world, in the opinion of GolfClubAtlas contributor, Sean Arble.

As it is, a ridge in the tee-shot landing area could leave you with a difficult stance for what is the hole's defining characteristic, the approach to a semi-volcano type green that stands some 12 feet above two greenside bunkers.

Is it just me, or would the green look a whole lot less awkward if putting surface and sand were on the same level? I'm assuming that's the idea. The green also slopes sharply to the back-left corner.


Cheap factor: Weekday nine-hole green fee $43.75
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Away from Planet Cheap:

• Ellis Barker tells the story of Walter J Travis. The link Ellis offers to the LA84 Foundation is paydirt indeed but you can also read Travis' thoughts on course design here (chapters 13, 14 and 16).

• A nice piece from Jay Flemma, reminding us why so many in this corner of golf's parish like Mike Strantz. Hope I'm not overlooking something really obvious here but I wonder how many other architects have tournaments honouring them as architects... 
  

• Some of you may recall Cheap Golf 's Finest Holes was once a regular patron of golfflyover.com when illustrating the merits of certain holes. Then the flyovers were sold on to GolfLink and became subscription only: disappointing but not aggravating, business is business. I wasn't even too perturbed when GolfLink wouldn't accept my credit card. But in the name of all that's customer-orientated - THREE EMAILS TO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND STILL NO REPLY??!! If ayone else has had similar problems with them, I'd be pleased to hear from you. In the meantime, GolfLink, get your act together and I might even link to you: better still, why not sell the stuff back to golfflyover.com? Life was so much better back then... 
  

• My one problem with synthetic backyard courses: disproportionate pin size...
  
  
  (Thanks to Golf Videos)

• Pic of the Day - Michigan's Tullymore Golf Club