123. Quick Trip South to Much Anticipated Ohoopee Match Club
In August 2018 I received via email an invitation to play in the Inaugural Bernard Darwin Matches at Ohoopee Match Club. Ohoopee has been much anticipated by golf aficionados for some time now. Founded by internet entrepreneur Michael Walrath (sold his company to Yahoo! for $850 million in 2007), Ohoopee’s official opening was in October 2018. The course was designed by Gil Hanse, his “partner in crime” Jim Wagner, and his team of “Cavemen”. Over the next couple of months I learned of some of the other participants (40 in all, and I knew about 15 before the event). The Matches were scheduled for November 14 and 15, and after a careful study of my to do list, I decided to tack on Greystone Golf & CC-Founders Course on Friday November 16, since it was almost next door to Ohoopee (a mere 5 hour drive west near Birmingham, AL…and it would only take me 7:45 to get back to Pinehurst assuming no traffic in Atlanta…once again proving the meaning of the first three letters of assuming).
In any case, I departed at 4:58am the morning on Wednesday November 14 on a 5-hour drive to the thriving metropolis of Cobbtown, GA, in southeastern Georgia. BTW, have zero idea the genesis of that name but doubt it is Ty Cobb, who was born in northeastern Georgia.
Ohoopee Match Club-Championship Course, November 14, 2018: Back about eleven years ago three young men with a passion for golf and golf architecture were in search of land (and $$) to build a “classic” golf course. Fortunately for them, they failed to do so prior to the collapse of many financial markets starting in the second half of 2008.
Instead in 2010 they founded The Outpost Club…a “virtual” club or golf “society”. I joined in early 2011 but resigned a year later due to a medical condition which happily subsided thereafter (knock on wood). Today The Outpost Club seems to be thriving and some two of its founders helped pull together The Ohoopee Match Club on a former onion farm encompassing some 3500 acres. Ohoopee is controlled by Michael Walrath, a serial entrepreneur who sold his first major company to Yahoo! in 2007 for $850 million and has a handicap index of 0.9 these days (was as low as 0.1 earlier this year)…in other words, he can play.
The Championship course encompasses 18 of the club’s 22 holes (very confusing but I promise to explain later) and from the back tees stretches to 7319 yards. Before I get into the course description, you need to understand that the club is firmly focused on promoting match play (as opposed to stroke play) golf. For non-golfers, when you are watching the PGA Tour on TV…you are watching stroke play…the objective is to have the lowest total number of strokes over a round of 18 holes, or of a tournament (usually 4 rounds or 72 holes). But most golf in the USA and elsewhere is played in match play format. In match play…it is you against a single opponent (or your team of two against a single team of two) as opposed to you against a large field. In a match play tournament, the winner plays a series of matches and must win them all (similar to the winner of the NCAA basketball championship winning six straight games). Once you lose, you are eliminated and either go home, go drinking, to go into the consolation bracket (otherwise known as “kissing your sister”).
In match play, the player who wins the most holes wins the match. It does not matter if you win a hole by one stroke or 5 strokes…it still counts as one hole won. Hence the playing strategy is very different and players are much more inclined to take risks…as the penalty for failure can be no more than one hole (in stroke play a risky shot can easily cost 2-4 strokes while attempting to extradite oneself from trouble).
Finally, some courses/holes are better suited for match play and some better suited for stroke play. Courses designed for stroke play will often “build to a crescendo” toward the end of the round to increase pressure, and risk/reward situations will be more muted. In match play, many matches are concluded before the last couple of holes so an architect may not want to hold best their best holes until the end of the round. And, if the risk of catastrophe is too great, players will be more conservative. For example, some question the difficulty of Royal Liverpool’s very first hole…dogleg right with out of bounds all along the right side…but this makes for a wonderful first playoff hole when a match is all square (“tied”) after 18. In the stroke play Open Championship it is now played as the third hole.
Another example is #4 at Brookline. The 2013 US Amateur was conducted at Brookline; during stroke play qualifying rounds players shied away from trying to drive the short par four 4thbecause the shot is blind, the green is extremely small, and the trouble left and long is ghastly…and right is no picnic. But facing these same challenges during match play many gave it a “go” as the worst thing that could happen if they were left or long was loss of a hole…as opposed to dropping 2-4+ strokes. In part because of this (as well as some other factors), Brookline’s Composite Course for the 2022 US Open may drop #4 and bring in the short downhill par 3 12thinstead. Risk-reward is a trade off, and stroke play can tend to magnify the risk, thereby leading to more conservative play.
OK, enough of this HHS (Happy Horse Sxxx). Now to the golf course. It is brilliantly strategic in design and reminded me of The Old Course at St. Andrews and Kingston Heath in the Melbourne Sandbelt in this way. The fairways (with one exception) are overly wide and extremely generous. But almost without fail, if you want a playable safe approach shot, you had to flirt with real trouble (generally difficult bunkers or scrub bushes and random high grass…there is no “manicured rough) off the tee. Trade offs abound at Ohoopee, and the golfer is left to make the decisions. And that is (1) exactly as it should be, and (2) superb architectural design. The greens are large and resemble “mergers” of several bowls…with the bowls separated by reasonably high ridges within the green. And trust me there are places on these greens you do not want to be (depending on that day’s pin position). In many ways the greens reminded me of Hanse’s work at Streamsong-Black (Post #106).
One of the great things about this course is it has 18 superb holes…and they “weave” together into an outstanding routing. The “ebb and flow” of the course is brilliant, and with the exception of from #1 green to #2 tee, the walks from green to tee are short. The property has about five different “looks/feels” and the transition from one to another is seamless (a la Cypress Point). Those looks/feels include:
o Pine Valley (especially #11 with its version of Hell’s Half Acre on PVGC’s #7 and #17 which reminded me of PVGC’s #17);
o Tobacco Road (NC) on the Par 3 165 yard #5;
o Royal Melbourne’s bunkering;
o the wetlands alongside Yeamans Hall GC…no wetlands here but the high grass sure reminded me of them; and
o bush country in South Africa…Bill Schulz had mentioned this at lunch when I first arrived and I scratched my head…but then noticed the same look that afternoon.
The conditioning here is excellent. I do not know how deep the sand goes here before one hits clay or rock, but this place had been inundated with rain before our arrival…and when I teed off on #1, I literally had to press hard to get the tee in the ground. I was pleasantly shocked.
The clubhouse was designed by the same architectural firm that designed the clubhouse at Chechessee Creek GC…and it shows. Comfortable, functional, simple, and inviting are words that immediately come to mind. And the cook whips up wonderful food. There are dormitory buildings that sleep 42 in single rooms that are excellent without any hint of being over the top (have zero idea how far one must travel to find a hotel room in these parts).
Favorite holes…probably #4, #5, #11 and #13…but given the choices, that is too hard a question:
--#4 is 342 downhill drivable straight par 4…with wide fairway if you lay back off the tee that just keeps narrowing the further you hit your tee shot (see pic), and the green had a very wicked pin position deep right;
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| Ohoopee #4, 342 yards...wide off tee unless you go for it. |
--#5 is a 165 yard uphill par 3 that “feels” like Tobacco Road…and whose large green boomerangs in front around a very deep bunker…and slopes heavily from left to right;
--#11 is 562 yard par 5, downhill off tee, then across the Hell’s XX Acre mentioned earlier, then uphill to a green sitting on a crest and surrounded by bunkers…not sure this would work on a stroke play course but should work great for match play; and
--#13 is a 256 yard par 3, down hill off the tee and then a sharp slope uphill fronting a green with a false front and then Biarritz dip just behind the false front…very cool green and hole.
On Wednesday we played a four-ball match and I partnered with Andy Troeger of NM (I had played with Andy at Brookline about 6 years ago), beating the team of Bob McCoy and Jay Bingham. I had hosted Jay at Brookline several years ago and Bob is one of the pioneers amongst golf aficionados and has been a friend for about 4-5 years
Weatherwise we lucked out….the forecast had been for rain every minute were were there. But at least for this first day, it held off. We were dry for 15 holes, then played about 1 ½ holes in light rain and the last 1 ½ in medium rain…but no complaints (the last fourball teed off 50 minutes behind us and was not so fortunate). After a good shower, drinks and dinner, I was happy to get some sleep. Thursday was scheduled for 18 holes of the Whiskey, or short course and a singles match against Will Smith (one of the founders of The Outpost Club). It poured heavily through the night!!
Ohoopee Match Club-Whiskey Course, November 15, 2018: Consistent with the forecast from the previous night, it stopped raining about 6:30am. Tee times were scheduled from 8:00 to 9:30 and the “strainer” on which Ohoopee’s 23 holes sits did its thing once again. But it was definitely colder…about 45°F when we teed off.
For the Whiskey Course, holes 2-5 drop out…and are replaced by four new holes (“A” through “D”). Additionally, the 525 yard par 5 6thbecomes the 2ndplaying as a 375 yard par 4, the 562 par 5 11thbecomes a par 4 of 298 yards, and the long par 3 13thand short par 4 14threverse roles…becoming a short par 4 followed by a long par 3. The other 10 holes are played from forward tees resulting in a 5610 yards par 69 compared with a 7319 yard par 72 for the Championship. Hard to explain…or I did a lousy job of explaining it…or both.
The Whiskey Course was somewhat of an afterthought, but definitely flows and plays wonderfully. And interestingly, hole #7 on Whiskey (“A” hole…I saw you smile and you have a filthy mind), a 499 yard par 5, might be the best hole of all 22. It is fairly straight and flat, with the wildest green I can recall playing or seeing. Jim Wagner designed it creating a punchbowl protected by bunkers and mounding, and including a small section of the green that wraps around (from the left side) behind a large mound behind the center of the green…truly crazy but it actually works.
Will Smith beat my butt this day; I was four down through 4, and closed out on 13…one of those matches where the word “if” cannot even be attempted. Which brings up a question for you English or Linguistic majors…did the word “if” exist in the English language before the game of golf was created?
The other match in our foursome was Andy Johnson (creator of “The Fried Egg” blog) against his buddy Peter Korbakes (founder of Sugarloaf Social Club), both good guys and from Chicago. Today, we escaped the rain and stayed dry.
All in all, a very special two day event at a magnificent new club and course. Only a question of how high this one goes on upcoming lists and in the years following (as many lists require a minimum number of panelist evaluations, and Ohoopee is very exclusive, it may take a while for it to qualify for some lists). Glad I played it, met new friends, and renewed old friendships. Now it was time to get back into the car.
The drive to Birmingham AL took the forecast 5 hours as I somehow avoided rush hour in Atlanta (which generally runs continuously except between 2:00am and 3:01am). Strangely though, the area near Hoover, AL had some of the worst traffic in every direction when I arrived (around 7:30pm)…in all directions (and there was no football game nearby).
Greystone Golf & Country Club-Founders Course, November 16, 2018: I was playing here because from 2016-19 it has hosted and will host the Senior Tour Tradition, a Champions Tour Major event. Previously, Greystone had hosted the Bruno’s Memorial Classic from 1992-2005. The course opened in 1991 and was designed by Bob Cupp and Hubert Green. It has never been included on any Top 100 list. From the tips it plays to 7293 yards (par 72).
I thought the best hole was the long par 4 3rd(453 yards) but frankly found the course to be fairly pedestrian, especially after playing Ohoopee for two days. It was in very good condition and is difficult to score well on…but very little thinking is required. Finally the aesthetics are not exactly enhanced by the homes that line every fairway…they are beautiful homes, but they do not add to the golf experience. I had a 43 – 39 = 82.
The good news was that I was the first player off after a one-hour frost delay, and was able to leave by noon (Central Time). The drive home was supposed to take eight hours but ended up taking nine…making for a long day. Atlanta traffic got its revenge! I pulled into our driveway just before 10pm and certainly slept late on Saturday!
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