This is the final part of our year-end roundup of the best golf courses and golf communities we visited in 2012.  If you see any golf course or golf community that piques your interest, please contact us for more information.  Links to our original reviews of these golf courses are highlighted.

        Golf got old for me in September, literally.  It started at the circa 1929 Torrington Country Club, which is actually in Goshen, CT, not Torrington, at the beginning of the Labor Day Weekend.  Torrington was designed by one of those architects, Orrin Smith, who is largely forgotten by history but respected during his time.  I had wanted to play Torrington for 20 years and had high expectations that were met by the sometimes classic, sometimes quirky, but always challenging layout.  I won’t soon forget one almost drivable par 4; the back edge of its green disappeared into golfing oblivion and made even a 30-yard pitch shot a knee knocker.  A week later, I hosted a couple of contributors to this web site at Yale Golf Club, which opened in 1926 and crams just about every classic element of early golf into one sprawling layout.  Doglegs, blind approach shots, false fronts, double-tiered greens…Yale has it all.  There is no more truly intimidating golf hole than #9 at Yale, a par 3 total carry over water and a steep face to a green that is about 65 yards(!) front to back with a four-foot deep chasm across its middle.  If the pin is at front and your tee shot lands toward the back –- or vice versa -– be grateful for a bogey.

The pin at Yale on the day I played was up front -- and my tee shot came to rest beyond the four-foot deep crevace that runs across the green.  It took me three putts to find the hole, including one from the valley.  One of the toughest par 3s you will ever be lucky enough to play.

        Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in 1927, and Donald Ross hit a big one that same year when he built Oyster Harbors Golf Club on Cape Cod.  The annual golf outing that I attend there every September never gets old. Mother Nature contributes just enough in the way of terrain changes to make the great architect’s tricky green complexes and maddening putting surfaces seem as natural as a Venus flytrap.

        I am a bit sheepish about announcing that I played Winged Foot in October since there is no record of that adventure; I decided not to burden my playing partners or play the tacky tourist by carrying a camera.  We played the championship course and, suffice to say, the layout, the changing tree colors, the white caddy outfits against the bright green fairways –- it is hard to overstate the experience of such a course, and hard to overstate how proud I was to break 90.  I played another tournament golf course a week later, the Thornblade Club in Greer, SC, just outside Greenville and host to the final round of the annual BMW Championship on the Nationwide Tour.  Not only is Thornblade a fine example of an early Tom Fazio course, but it is also the breeding ground for such PGA Tour luminaries as Lucas Glover and Bill Haas (the Haas homestead almost hangs over the 5th green).  A couple of days later, I revisited Musgrove Mill in rural Clinton, SC, with the SC Golf Rating Panel, a farewell of sorts, we thought at the time, since the McConnell Golf Group had announced it was closing the challenging course for lack of members and play.  Thankfully, as the year comes to a close, there is word that some dedicated Musgrove members have found a way (and the funds) to forestall the hangman’s noose.

Greer, SC's Thornblade Club, a Nationwide Tournament venue, may be the most stable private golf club we visited this year, with an involved membership that spans all ages and such golf luminary members as the Haas Family and Lucas Glover.

        The next day, the Panel moved on to one of my favorite golf communities, The Reserve at Lake Keowee, whose sleek and pleasurable Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course is but one of the amenities that lure families from Atlanta and the Greenville area.  With one of the cleanest lakes in America at its doorstep, a huge community-gathering lawn that sweeps up from the lake to the large and rustic clubhouse (with an excellent Austrian chef at the helm of the restaurant) and the most inclusive club membership available (all direct members of a family have member privileges without fees or dues), there doesn’t seem much reason to leave the enclave. (Good thing since Greenville is an hour away and, frankly, Clemson, 25 minutes away on a winding road, is only mildly attracting.)

        I rested up in November for a big ending in December, which began with our first Home On The Course couples event at The Landings, just outside Savannah.  Four couples representing Ft. Wayne, IN, Goshen, NY, Atlanta and Boston joined us for a long weekend that was both active and relaxing.  Much of the activity was centered on two of The Landings’ golf courses, Oak Ridge and Palmetto, both in fine condition but offering two different playing challenges (the Arthur Hills Palmetto course the tougher of the two, with a few forced carries over marsh).  The Landings chefs also strutted their stuff with a special three-course lunch after golf and two sumptuous dinners.  Although it was optional, three of the couples opted for multiple visits to homes currently for sale at The Landings.  (Note: We hope to repeat the Discovery Weekend in 2012 at two or three golf communities. If any readers have suggestions about where to hold it, please contact us.)

Couples from Ft. Wayne, IN, Atlanta, Goshen, NY, and Boston participated in our first Discovery Weekend, held at The Landings near Savannah.  They played the Oak Ridge and Palmetto courses (Palmetto shown here), two of the community's six nicely conditioned and sporting layouts.

        I could hardly have asked for two better golf courses to end my year than Camden Country Club and Columbia Country Club.  Columbia, which is actually in Blythewood, SC, is a 27-hole complex by Ellis Maples, whose fairways are open and fair but whose charms are hidden in the large and subtly undulated greens, which were also in stunningly good condition for so late in the year.  Although the course is surrounded by a mature community, I do not recall a single home or out-of-bounds stake intruding on the round.  The only thing that intruded on our round at Camden was a freight train that barreled down the tracks that separate the 11^th green from the 12^th tee, tracks that once brought revelers to the luxury hotel that sat alongside the par 3 12^th.  Those days sadly ended during World War II but fortunately the Camden golf course is substantially as Walter Travis and Donald Ross intended it –- short and mean in ways that leave you smiling in frustration.  (Ross was hired in 1939 to remake the circa 1922 greens and to enhance other aspects of the layout.)  As befits a true Ross course, I might have had one or two putts all day that did not break at least a cup’s width –- maybe.  I cannot think of a better way to ring in the new year without saying goodbye to the old style of golf.

Donald Ross fairways may be wide, generally speaking, but a pushed tee shot at the par 4 7th at Camden Country Club creates a triple threat for the approach to the green; the fairway bunker, a tree at the fairway's right edge, and a greenside bunker that takes away the "safe" play to the front.

        As 2011 ends, there are signs that the housing market may be improving incrementally.  This may give some baby boomers the confidence to sell their primary homes and move to a warmer climate where they can indulge their urge to play golf year round and enjoy the benefits of a lower cost of living environment.  Still, some high-end and high-profile golf communities like Reynolds Plantation and the Cliffs Communities and their property owners and club members face an uncertain year.  Developers of both former high flying communities face financial uncertaintly, and even the recharged Tiger Woods may not complete his golf course deisgn for The Cliffs when the Cliffs' vaunted amenities and seven golf clubs are sold by financially strapped developer Jim Anthony, which seems more and more likely.  We will address the year ahead for golf communities in our January issue of Home On The Course, our free monthly newsletter.  You can subscribe at the top of this page.

         Thank you for your support and continued readership.  Happy New Year to all.

Ellis Maples made his large greens at Columbia Country Club tough to access.  Here's wishing all our readers a 2012 free of traps.

This is the second of a three-part wrap up of golf courses and communities visited in 2011.  Links to original reviews are provided.  If you would like to visit any of the golf communities mentioned, please contact the editor and we will be happy to arrange it.

        In June, I played golf near my home in Connecticut.  One highlight was a charity event played at Shuttle Meadow, a Willie Park Jr layout first opened in 1916, another of the courses from a bygone era whose distance (6,250 yards from the tips) belies the angles into greens that one must set up in order to score well.  Park, who designed courses worldwide, may be best known for the Gullane and Gailles golf courses in Scotland and Olympia Fields outside Chicago.

        A family vacation in Rehoboth beach in July put us within short driving distance of interesting but dissimilar public layouts inside golf communities.  In his review of the Jack Nicklaus designed Bayside Resort near Ocean City, MD, Tim Gavrich wrote that the golf course “is certainly not a place where a beginner will enjoy learning the game.”  At 7,500 yards from the tips, and with Nicklaus’ typical hard spots, Bayside is anything but a typical resort course. Baywood Greens wasn’t a walk in the park either, but it looked like a park –- one with a profusion of flowers. Indeed, the Bill Love design seems almost secondary to the 200,000 plants and flowers a zealous owner commanded.  Even on the gimmicky par 14^th, with two separate water-edged fairways, the flowers that engulf the cart bridge are almost enough to make you forget about the contrived layout.  Owners of the $200s+ homes adjoining the course can’t escape the floral views, and why would they want to?

Occasionally, the vistas at Jack Nicklaus' Bayside Resort layout in Maryland are interrupted by condos.

        August began with a meet up with my friend Bob for a round at Pinecrest Golf Club in Lumberton, NC, a golf course whose one nine dates to the early 20^th Century and whose greens were attributed to Donald Ross circa 1940 but whose history and layout imply it’s not pure Ross.  Dick Wilson was hired a couple of decades after Ross’ work and asked to harmonize the two nines, giving the course a somewhat patchwork feel.  A few holes were interesting but, for the most part, the layout was straightforward and the putting greens in the heat of the summer were too slow to appreciate. (Mr. Ross would not be happy.)  That night we stayed on site at the Country Club of South Carolina, in Florence and then played the course the following day.   On perhaps the hottest day of the summer, with the thermometer over 100, we had the course to ourselves.  In heat like that, every distant green seemed like an oasis, and the libation in the club’s modest bar and grill was like nectar of the gods.  The course wasn’t bad either, but the highlight of the stay was a huge three-bedroom condo we stayed in; one just like it down the block was listed for $225,000, which seemed like an extreme bargain (especially if the air conditioning worked).

Despite temperatures over 100 degrees, my playing partner and I could still appreciate the go and no-go options of a 316 yard par 4 at Country Club of South Carolina in Florence.  No-go will almost certainly yield a conservative par; go will yield something else.

        A few days later I made a revisit to Haig Point for a South Carolina Golf Rating Panel outing on 18 of Rees Jones’ 29 holes on Daufuskie Island, SC.  (No typo there: The club members commissioned two extra holes to take advantage of some scenic and challenging routings over marsh.)  I had played Haig years earlier, before an impressive renovation that now makes the course play more like a famous layout across the Calibogue Sound, Harbour Town.  You won’t find many more courses that put sprawling live oak trees to better advantage as backdrop and, occasionally, living hazards.  Invest the time to take the ferry over to Daufuskie, the only way you can get there short of a helicopter, and check out the environmentally pure and socially engaged community there.  (I would be happy to make arrangements for you to visit the private community and golf course.)

The marsh comes into play often at Rees Jones' Haig Point.

        The South Carolina Golf Rating Panel, which holds a handful of outings for its members each year, moved back to the mainland and Callawassie Country Club the following day.  Callawassie, though an island, does not require a ferry to reach it.  The golf community is near Okatie, about midway between Hilton Head and Beaufort, and it too had undergone a renovation of its Tom Fazio 27-hole layout.  The golf course may not have the drama of Haig Point, but its marshy spots provide plenty of challenges and visual delights.  And its community is tight knit and its residents involved with the life of the golf club.