bearlakereservefromtee.jpg

I am hoping to play the new nine-hole course at Bear Lake Reserve, sited on the top of the mountain at the four-year old community near Sylva, NC.

  

    I am putting together a five-day trip to the mountains of western North Carolina for the first week in September.  My plans are to visit a few golf communities within an hour or so south of Asheville, an arc roughly from the Rutherfordton/Lake Lure area to Waynesville/Sylva and including the Hendersonville/Flat Rock area.  Candidates on the list include Bright's Creek, Balsam Preserve, Cummings Cove, Queens Gap (Nicklaus golf course under construction) and possibly a round of golf at the Grove Park Inn on its famed Donald Ross course.  If time permits, I might make a stop to play a quick round at Bear Lake Reserve, whose stunning nine-hole course opened a few days after my visit in June.  
    If you are interested in golf real estate in this popular and beautiful area, let me know which golf developments you are interested in, and I will try to put it on my visit list.  Just use the Contact Us button in the tool bar above (or click here), and I promise to respond quickly.

tobaccoroad9approach.jpg
The fun begins after a challenging tee shot finds the middle of the fairway at Tobacco Road's 9th hole.


    The handicappers at Tobacco Road, Mike Strantz's sandy and weirdly fascinating opus in Sanford, NC, must have had an excruciating time choosing the toughest hole on the course.  One bad swing on virtually any of the par 4s or 5s, and double bogey or worse is definitely in play.  They alighted on #9 as the toughest, a par 4 of beastly proportions that features just about every hazard and challenge the rest of the course presents, which are many (except water).
    The 9th is a great choice, as the golfer who has made it to the last tee on the front nine without doing tootobaccoroad9teemarker.jpg much damage to his scorecard or ego will wonder if it all may come crashing.  The long waste area in front of the tee doesn't present any problem to those who can get their tee shot airborne, but the landing zone in the fairway does.  It is pinched by two large and sandy waste areas on both sides of a fairway that tilts right about 210 yards out and then swerves back toward the left.  The effect is to make the fairway look narrower than it really is, although it is plenty narrow, and to send a shiver down the spine to somewhere in the area of the knees.
    If you collect yourself enough to make a good swing down the left side, your ball will take the hard kick right before running along a bank and returning to mid fairway.  From there you have no more than a mid to short iron to the green.  That is the good news.  The other news is that the green is steeplytobaccoroad9greensideview.jpg elevated, about as deep as a pair of knickers and protected on the right by a cavernous bunker.  The approach must carry over the front edge of the green and somehow keep from bounding to the steep back slope from which the possibility of chipping back down the mountain is real.  I recall breathing a sigh when my approach stopped just off the left side of the green, leaving a straight on chip across the length of the putting surface.  I made par, so with a song in my heart, the back nine at Tobacco Road almost seemed normal.  Almost.

 

tobaccoroad9greensidebunker.jpg

Hazards in the hazards include footprints that aren't raked.  All bunkers at Tobacco Road are of the waste variety.  You may need assistance getting out of the greenside bunker at #9.