CONGRESSIONAL (GOLD)

THE FIRST TEE AT THE GOLD COURSE

A couple of weeks ago, I joined a friend for an afternoon at Congressional’s less heralded Gold course. While the Blue course gets all of the attention (hosting Tiger’s tournament and the 2011 U.S. Open), the Gold hums along at a very nice clip. To me, the best holes on the property, with the exception of the Blue’s superb 18th, are all on the Gold course. The holes that I am enamored with are all located on the large parcel of land that also is the site of the Blue. Art Hills came in a number of years ago and spruced up the Gold and he did an admirable job. The most compelling holes on the Gold are the first four and fifteenth through seventeenth holes. The middle of the course is across a road on a rather tight piece of property, and with one exception (the 12th, an awkward dogleg left with water on both sides of the approach) all are fine if unremarkable and slightly narrow, parkland golf holes.

THE TEE MARKERS AT CONGO

The opening hole is my favorite on both Congressional courses. The tee shot plays downhill to an offset fairway that is canted on a right to left slope. The hole doglegs left and the green sits just on the far side of the bottom of a fairly severe hill. The end result is a hole that feels like it was routed over the natural topography. Art Hills could have bulldozed some of the slopes and made them less severe. Instead, he left them alone and the end result is a hole that feels more natural and unique than anything on the Blue course, which is series of strong, but rather mundane holes.

The next few holes are similarly good. The second doglegs around a series of bunkers which need to be flown for the ideal line into the green. The redan like third on the Gold is inherently more interesting than any par three on the more lauded course (infinitely better than the new tenth on the Blue, a very modern looking downhill par three over water to an overly narrow green).

THE NEW 10th ON THE BLUE

The three holes on the back that I admire (15-17) all flow well with the land. I particularly like the seventeenth. The fairway is straight away, but the further down one goes the more likely the ball is to pitch into the left rough. The player must make a decision on the tee between laying back for a good fairway lie, or bombing it as far as possible with the likely result of a shot from the rough to a perched green.

On the Gold course, Hills occasionally asks the golfer to hit his tee shot over the corner of a bunker or over a blind rise rather than simply slotting the tee shot between rough lines and bunkers right and left. I was not fortunate enogh to play the old Blue course before RTJ and then his son Rees came in to make it more “fair.” I wish I had. The land on the Blue is similar to that of the holes on the Gold that I like, but it has been cut and shaped to be devoid of character. The bunker work on the Blue is some of the most bland in golf. While Congo will always be well respected in the world of golf, I truly believe that the Blue could rise in people’s opinion if they tried to restore some of the character and uniqueness that must have been there before the Joneses sterilized it. After all, they need only to look at the adjacent holes on the Gold for inspiration.