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Golf Club At Cape Cod
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Photography by George Peet
Oftentimes, it’s the municipal courses on Cape Cod that are recognized as some of the best, and their reputation as a result continues to grow.
But the cream of the crop are the private clubs, and they always have been. As much as we all love the affordable municipal golf fees combined with a relaxed, usually friendly atmosphere, it’s probably safe to say that every golfer on the face of the earth, and especially on Cape Cod, secretly, if not overtly, wants to play on the premier turf – where the clubhouses and the maintenance facilities aren’t saddled by town budgets, and the real estate was made, by some godly intervention and again large sums of money, for golf. The private clubs make us feel like kings of golf, even if our USGA handicap card says otherwise.
After spending the better part of a sunny, picture-perfect summer golf day in East Falmouth, across from Ballymeade Country Club, slight wind, a little bit of that morning dew on the greens, I’m assuming that what management was thinking when they decided to build The Golf Club of Cape Cod was, “How can we build a course that will make our golfers feel like royalty?” And I’m comfortable with that assumption. This course is the stuff of a well-thought-out business plan, combined with a superior understanding of what it takes to give people quality golf.
Rees Jones deserves much of the credit so far, along with the guys who built the course, adhering to Jones’ specifications. The clubhouse is currently under construction, therefore any compliments or criticisms on the services or the amenities will be saved for a later date and another magazine issue.
Jones designed The Golf Club of Cape Cod, a private, members-only, 7047-yard (from the tips), par-72 golf club. It’s the first Jones design on the Cape, and it seems that Mr. Jones intended to make his architectural stamp on the easternmost peninsula of the U.S. a memorable and indeed a lasting mark. Architecturally savvy readers will be familiar with Rees Jones courses in the periphery like Nantucket Golf Club, named Golf Digest’s best new private course in 1998, and also the Jones course at The Pinehills in Plymouth.
The Golf Club of Cape Cod is a textbook Jones design that holds steady to the Jones philosophy of creating “an environment for the game of golf that is challenging, fair, and aesthetically pleasing.”
In an interview with Golf on Cape Cod in the fall of 2005, before the course was completed, Rees Jones talked at length about his new Cape Cod effort. During that interview, Jones seemed truly excited with this design, in particular the land that the course was built on, as if he achieved some level of harmony between his academic philosophy, his golf course vision, and the actual finished product.
“I think this land fits the New England design mode,” said Jones in ‘05, “because architects like Donald Ross would go and select the best property for the best course. They had choices everywhere. In this case, it is just like an old site, pre-Depression-style. It is like we selected this as the best site with the best holes. I would really like to play this course with a person for the first time.”
It’s true. The man was not patting himself on the back without providing the evidence. The course has a kind of magnetism to the eye.
The first hole begins the journey with an elevated tee overlooking a wide landing area. The green, also elevated, sits at a near 30-degree dogleg to the right, 380 yards away. From the tee box, the entire hole is visible – no tricks, no hidden agenda, simply straightforward.
But not easy. The cover of The Golf Club of Cape Cod book is certainly telling and forthright with its challenges, but the test is in the pages, in the routing of the following 18 holes.
Jones stressed this point. “Good routing is essential,” said the amicable architect.
Critics agree with Jones’ appreciation for routing. Many believe routing a golf course is both an art and a science. In Routing the Golf Course, a celebrated golf architecture book, author Forrest Richardson commented, “There are 35,000 golf courses across the world, and it is my guess that out of the 50 million golfers who occupy their fairways, it is a rare instance to hear one say something along the lines of ‘Gee, the routing of this course is very interesting.’”
Rees Jones’ comments mirror Richardson’s. In fact, Jones has tried earnestly to draw more attention to the importance of routing as an essential function of the golf architect’s job. “When you read articles on golf courses, you read about the green contours, the bunkers, the style, the vegetation – whether it be grass or trees. You read about the length of the course. But you never read about how 18 holes come together on one piece of land,” said Jones.
“It’s like spokes on a wheel,” Jones explained. “It all has to work. They all have to fit together.”
And fit together they do. From a bird’s eye view, many of the holes at The Golf Club are parallel and/or perpendicular to each other; though the player rarely realizes he is playing next to other golfers – a bright and colorful feather in Jones’ routing cap.
The second hole is one of only a few exceptions to the rule. A short par 4 that travels steadily uphill to the green 286 yards away, the second is visible from the adjacent par 4 sixth, which is hardly something to complain about. And complain, I will not.
Like the first tee, most of the tees at The Golf Club of Cape Cod are elevated, providing an honest look at the obstacles, allowing the player to clearly envision a safe route to the pin. The vast majority of the landing areas off the tee are generous, allowing golfers the freedom to swing away and also provide a noticeable sense of space, similar to standing at the crest of a hill overlooking a pasture – except in this case, the pasture is hole after hole of clean cut grass.
The fairways are appropriately layered with classic architectural features, fairway bunkers strategically placed to demand careful course management, mounds and pockets dispersed throughout to make course management more difficult, and contoured greens that reward well placed approaches while penalizing errant shots.
Beyond the routing and the overall visual of the holes at The Golf Club of Cape Cod, the greens are a close second for bragging rights. The greens are subtly challenging. Not a single green on the course will force you to enter the 200-ft. putting challenge. Nor will any green subject golfers to a three-tier or even a two-tier putt for that matter. The greens are medium-sized, delicately undulating – therefore difficult to read – and appropriately demanding of focus and concentration. They’re lightning quick, fairly hard in their rookie season infancy, and a pleasure to putt on.
Similar to the greens, the bunkers have a kind of high-falutin, these things are more thought-out than the average bunker, quality. There’s a thicker sand; the granules have a more beefy diameter. When you press your feet into the white (unlike tan beach sand) cache of granules on your way down the bunker’s slope, your shoe sinks only slightly like a supportive cushion. Also, when the golf club pierces the surface of the sand, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger of digging too deep.
There are two internal bodies of water that come into play on four different holes and enough of that exceptional white sand placed in cross-bunkers and bunker-laced par 3’s to deliver that quintessential Cape Cod golf course visual. Many holes are bordered with the ever-Cape Cod-prevalent fescues.
The ten par 4’s at The Golf Club of Cape Cod will test the golfer in a number of ways. The obvious advice follows: where you see easy paths from tee to green, take them.
The 9th hole, for example, is a gradual-to-steep uphill ride from tee to green. A couple straight shots and the hole is conquered. Or, offer yourself up to the rigors of the hills, the fairly blind approach to a green where only the flag on the flagstick will be visible or the bunkers mid-way, and suddenly this seemingly simple par 4 unleashes its difficulty.
It’s almost as if Jones’ design allows you to choose between two paths: the difficult and the pre-determined. In a sense, the design tells you how to play and in what way to play successfully – the 12th and the 14th are perfect examples of this phenomenon. The ideal path is clear from the tee box on both holes, either take it or walk your own line at your own risk.
Of the four par 3s, two on each side, only the 13th is over the 200-yard mark. The length of the 173-yard 16th borders water on the right, opening many lateral hazard penalty possibilities. The green sitting 141 yards from the tee on the 4th hole might as well have been built on Old Silver Beach, considering the huge fairway bunker that protects it from any shot not struck on the short grass. And the 180-yard 8th is the least problematic, requiring a strong swing of a lower iron, and hopefully by the 8th, the subtleties of the greens will be more conspicuous to the discerning eye.
As for the four par 5s, two on each side, all are over 515 yards. In contrast to many of the par 4s, none of the greens of the 5s are visible from the tee. Both the 3rd and the 5th are straightforward and call for big drives and smart irons, while the 11th and the 18th are in a contest for the most spectacular on the golf course.
The 11th begins with an elevated tee that points the driver to the right, before a strong dogleg to the left opens up a beautiful landscape of water, bunkers, a twisting downhill fairway and a slender green.
The 18th, the most stellar on many courses, travels slightly uphill, doglegs slightly to the right and finishes at the foot of the clubhouse. The cleverly placed fairway bunkers make maneuvering the 18th a precarious and unnerving proposition for those chasing the eagle putt. The rest of us will travel the 18th with open eyes and respect, not only for the beauty of the hole itself, but also for the ending of a magnificent tour through Rees Jones’ creative golf vision and one of the few remaining pieces of land where golf will be possible on Cape Cod.
After all, the Cape can only be home to so many golf courses. And as that number comes to an inevitably definite end, Cape Cod ought to be proud to wear the Rees Jones signature.
“Golf is a game of escape,” reminded Jones. Those of us lucky enough to escape in East Falmouth will feel like kings, and that experience will last as long as the existence of The Golf Club of Cape Cod.
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