Royal New Kent

Probably no modern golf architect has made a greater per-course impact on the game of golf than Mike Strantz. He left fewer than 10 original courses, yet some of these—especially Tobacco Road in the North Carolina sand hills—have drawn an incredible amount of interest and have been the subject of as much discussion as almost any course built in modern times.

And this is undoubtedly because of the style of most of Strantz’s courses—they’re incredibly bold, both visually and in terms of design features. He moved incredible amounts of dirt in an attempt to recreate some of the visuals of Irish dunescapes in the inland mid-Atlantic. While many architects in the 90s moved a lot of dirt at the sides of holes, leaving the fairways and greens relatively flat, Strantz was not afraid to build 25 foot hills in the middle of a fairway or as the site for a green. This has made several of his holes—and several of his courses—incredibly controversial. Many praise the vision and artistry of this shaping while others criticize it for being too much and making his courses far too hard for most of the people who play them.

While not as famous as Tobacco Road, all of this discussion applies equally well to Royal New Kent, Golf Digest’s Best New Public Course in 1997, the second consecutive year that a Strantz course won that award (Stonehouse, just down the road, won it in 1996). Here Strantz jazzed up a rolling, but not hilly piece of mixed countryside/forest, creating numerous blind shots, deep bunkers, and skinny hilltop greens. I think it gets a bit less attention than Tobacco Road because it isn’t in as golf-rich an area as Pinehurst and doesn’t have the sandy soil that make so many of Tobacco Road’s features so memorable. But it’s a very similar course to Tobacco Road, with several weird and severe holes. I don’t think it has as many great holes as Tobacco Road and the routing is even clunkier (this is an under-appreciated problem with several Strantz courses), but it also doesn’t have the truly awful holes that make me always play devil’s advocate with the Tobacco Road defenders.

Royal New Kent and its neighbor Stonehouse had fallen on hard times in the last decade. I think both had been closed for an extensive period of time. I didn’t get to Stonehouse so I can’t comment on the state of things there, but it appears that the current ownership has made a significant investment into Royal New Kent. The course was in excellent condition, with the fairways and greens having been regressed in recent years and the bunkers filled with nice, white sand. I didn’t have a hard time getting a tee time here on a Sunday morning a few days in advance—as opposed to Golden Horseshoe, which was almost completely booked—but when I arrived, I was pleased to see that the course was fairly full.

While I’ll have my criticisms of Royal New Kent, overall I liked it a lot. It’s definitely a course that deserves to exist, especially given how few examples of Strantz architecture there are. I’m glad to see that it’s being kept true to his intentions, which must be no small (or inexpensive) feat.


The first hole, a relatively short par 4, is classic Mike Strantz…for better and worse. On one hand, I think the hole looks really good. It reminds me a bit of the opening hole at Tobacco Road, with the fairway winding between large hills. But this hole looks a bit more natural.

On the other hand, it’s quite tricky, although maybe not unnecessarily so. If you drive it up the fairway to the right, you’ll be fine. You’ll also be fine if you go over the edge of the ‘dune’ on the left side of the fairway, which requires a carry of about 230. But if you go left of this, you can carry the dune and still end up in the junk—it’s probably 20 yards from the top of the dune to the fairway on the other side. I took this line out of concern that I could run through the fairway if I went further right. But that isn’t an issue; the fairway is about 70 yards deep over the right edge of the dune!

The smart line here is over the right edge of the dune on the left. Any further left and whatever the distance is to the top of that dune, you'll need at least another 20 yards to reach the fairway.

The approach is rough too, especially if you’ve laid well back. While—again—there’s much more room up there than appears (the green is 40 yards deep), any miss short will come about 20 yards back off the front of the green. And misses to the sides are clearly no good either. So it’s not a bad hole, but it’s too much for a first hole.

One of many tough approaches. Take at least one club extra because there's plenty of room up top and you cannot be short.

The par 5 second hole is also a lot. It’s very similar to the great eleventh at Tobacco Road, although I don’t think this hole works as well. Both hook right around a large chasm and to give yourself a chance at the green in two, you want to hug the right side. The problem main problem with this hole is that it’s very hard to tell where the junk on the right side is…and where it is is not static. The further you go, the more it cuts to the left. So it’s very hard to figure out how to drive the ball here. Best thing is to just accept this as a three-shot hole and play well out to the left.

You can see bits of trouble up the right here and tell that the trouble cuts into the fairway the further you go, but you can't tell the distance to any of it. I'd suggest avoiding that altogether and playing toward the edge of the tree line on the left.

There is one thing about this hole that I prefer to Tobacco Road’s eleventh—there’s actually some room to lay up. If you happened to drive it to a place where you could consider going for the green in two (again, not sure where that would be), it’d be a pretty interesting decision because there’s plenty of room to play safe left, but the hole narrows a lot as you get closer to the green.

Even if you can't go for the green, the lay up is still interesting because there's real challenge in picking the right line.

You can see the differences between the second at Royal New Kent (above) and the eleventh at Tobacco Road from the aerials. The line of the right edge of the fairway on the Tobacco Road hole is straighter and the visuals from the tee are also better, making it easier to hug the right side. The Royal New Kent hole also has more of a hook shape. But it also gives you a lot more room to lay up. The second at Royal New Kent almost reminds me more of the famous thirteenth at The Dunes in Myrtle Beach, where the main challenge is picking a line over the lake on the lay up. That's also the most interesting shot on the second at Royal New Kent.

Except for Caledonia, all of the Strantz courses that I’ve played (Caledonia, Royal New Kent, True Blue, Tobacco Road) have significant issues with routing. Royal New Kent has the worst routing of the four easily. One thing I hate is when the cart ride (no one should walk this course) to the next hole is longer than the next hole. In this case, the cart ride is about three times the length of the hole, a par 3 of maybe 175 yards.

The only reason I can think of why there's a 500 yard gap between the second green and the third tee is that they planned to put houses in the space between. But this is still not a good excuse for the gap.

And the hole itself is interesting, but just way too much—an hourglass-shaped green that’s probably 50 yards deep perched over ~20 deep hollows on both sides and blind in front. Again, there’s a lot more room at the front of the green here than it seems. If the flag is in the back, I hope you’re really good with your longer irons. But it also may be possible to use the slope at the back-right of the green to putt from the front-right to the back-left.

I think this is a pretty cool-looking hole. But it's hard to tell what you should(n't)/can(not) do from the tee.

The front-right of the green is fairly large and there's also some open ground short here that isn't in the frame. You can also probably putt from here to the back-left. So it might just work. But it's still a lot given how penalizing the misses are.

The wildness continues with the blind drive on the 380 yard (from the 6,700 yard tees) fourth. I also thought that this was a very good looking hole. Despite appearances, it’s the tamest one so far, with tons of room out to the left off the tee. It becomes tighter on the approach, but not unreasonably so. Because the hole turns gently right, it’s best to play up the right side (close to the bunkers) to shorten the approach.

There must be a lot of shaping here, but it's hard to tell what Strantz did. That's one of the strengths of this course. Some parts are obviously shaped, but everything blends well together at the margins and it's often hard to tell where the shaping ends.

Another good-looking--and less visually demanding--shot. But the green here is fairly narrow so accuracy is required.

Not even the least bit tame is the long par 5 fifth, which is one of the toughest par 5s that I’ve played. Most of the real difficulty is on the drive; you need to carry about 225 to clear the bunkers on the right but any further than about 275 and you run into bunkers through the fairway.

The bunkers on the left are a short carry and there's room over them, but that'll leave a fully blind second. Better is to skirt those on the right because the right side of the fairway will at least give you a partial view.

Even if you’ve driven it in line with the bunkers, that approach is almost completely blind. I’d strongly recommend walking or driving past the bunkers to see what’s on the other side. The fairway is wide open. But the blindness makes it difficult to choose the aggressive shot that you’ll need to get within decent range of the green for your third.

I guess in a way it’s an interesting test. You have to be precise with your drive and then either have the courage to hit a long second into uncertainty or lay back and face a long third. This is probably one of those times where while I don’t like the hole, I don’t think I can bring myself to say that it’s a bad one.

This is as good a look as you're going to get off your drive here.

This shot gives a sense of how much room there is out here. You probably can't reach the bunkers at the sides and it's wide-open short of that.

After another cart ride that’s almost as long as the next hole, we come to a mid-length par 4. This is another tough driving hole, with bunkers narrowing the fairway starting at 250 on the left. It’s probably prudent to lay a bit back here. But the green is one of the wildest on the course, with a tier about 7 feet high separating the smaller, lower front section from the larger back.

This is a tough driving hole and it may be worth laying back short of the bunker on the right.

The pin on this day was on the smaller, lower front tier. Using the tier to back your shot up to the hole is a good idea...I did that unintentionally and almost holed it!

Seven is a tough, long par 3. As is clearly a theme with the course, there’s more room out there than appears. But maybe not that much; it’s probably not a good idea to aim much left of the peak of the mound behind the green.

Another very tough par 3. In the first few years after the course opened, the grass left of the green was kept short. I think that'd be better to reduce a bit of the visual intimidation.

Eight is another shortish par 4 with a puzzling drive. On this hole more than others, just keep it simple: hit left of the bunkers. As long as you’re not too far left, there’s plenty of room. And you’ll want to get some distance because you’re almost guaranteed to have a blind approach. It another very good looking hole but again, awfully tough.

The junk right of the fairway is a bit of a red herring. It's good to keep close to it but you should not try to carry it--room runs out quick on the other side.

Another heavily shaped but very natural-looking shot...and another blind shot!

I think that the par 4 ninth might be the easiest hole on the front nine, which gives you an indication of how difficult it is (hey, the course didn’t get a slope rating of 149 from 6,700 yards for nothing). Our tees were up, so it was just an iron to stay short of the bunkers on the left. From the card yardage tees (about 380), aim your drive at the left edge of the bunkers. There’s no reason to mess with the junk on the right here.

I don't think that this hole is actually easier but it seemed easier than the others because you can actually tell where you can and can't hit it. Plus, there's plenty of room out there.

The approach is another blind shot but you should remember from the drive that short-right is no good, so hedge a bit left.

Ten is a much easier par 5 than the previous two. It’s listed at 578 on the card but plays substantially shorter because (1) the fairway slopes forward and it’s easy to hit a very long drive and (2) the card yardage measures the length of the fairway. If you go at the green on your second, it’s probably 75 yards shorter because the fairway winds to the right around a wetland.

This is one of the widest fairways on the course, so swing away. I got to within easy range of the green—I only had a six-iron. But this must be one of the toughest greens to hit from any kind of distance as it’s narrow from this line (but very deep from the layup zone) and you’re hemmed in by trees on the left. Plus, the green is bisected by about a six foot high tier. It requires an outstanding shot to hit and hold if you’re going for it in two. But because it improves the angle and allows you to play into the slope of the green, the approach is much easier from the layup zone.

It’s a wild hole and probably not something that I would create, but like the fifth--there’s a logic to it that works even if it might not be a personal favorite.

Down the line of the cart path works well here. And now's the time to swing away.

The tough shot at the green if you hit a good drive.

The view and angle become much better as you move toward the lay up zone.

I’m not sure that there’s such a working logic to the ~380 yard eleventh. This hole is simply too hard for most golfers. The fairway narrows past the bunkers on the right and this was one of the few holes where I laid up off the tee.

But the issue is with the approach, which plays about 30 feet uphill to a green fronted by a 10+ foot deep bunker. I guess you can play safe out to the left and that’s probably what most people should do. But the green is also not very deep and there’s a decent chance that if you try to hit it, you’ll take an X on the hole. I’m not a big fan of holes where there’s a very fine line between a birdie and an X and this is certainly one (I happened to come out of the good side of the line this time!).

Many drives on this course have poor visuals but wide open spaces. This one is the opposite.

This is an extremely hard shot for most golfers. Fortunately there's a safe space at the left.

I mentioned on the front nine that one of my routing pet peeves is when the drive to get to the next hole is longer than the next hole. Well another of my pet peeves is when there’s a tee right next to the green that you just finished but that’s the tee for the hole after the next one and the actual next hole is a par 3 that’s been shoehorned in off to the side. Twelve at Royal New Kent is maybe the most egregious example of this because you have to drive about 100 yards the wrong direction to get to the tee, then you play 175 yards even further in the wrong direction, then drive back to the eleventh green to play the thirteenth hole. This is one of the worst routing clunks that I’ve ever seen on a golf course.

The eleventh green is bottom center-left while the thirteenth tee is just off to its right. Instead of going there, we turn left, drive across a road, play a par 3, then drive all the way back.

Too bad…the par 3 is a not a bad hole in its own right. I tend not to be a big fan of these long par 3 Strantz greens, but I might this one less because there’s good visibility to all sections of the green and you can see the slopes that you can play to get to the different sections. Plus, the hole is good-looking.

This hole allows you to see how well done the shaping is because you can obviously tell where on the left it ends. And you can also see the various side and backboards for the different sections of the green.

Thirteen is a short par 4 with a simple and very good concept. While there’s a lot of room out to the left, we can see the green from the tee and tell that it’s not too wide and slopes off left and right. This means that we’ll have a better shot at it if we place our drives up the right side of the fairway. The primary challenge with that is that it’s probably 270 to get past the bunkers.

Good visuals again off the tee here. Hug the right side so that you have the deepest angle into the green here.

Angles don't always matter but I think they do here because the green runs off both sides and is narrow. If you're coming in from the left here, you have little green to work with and unfavorable slope.

Now we have a 300 yard drive through a neighborhood and across a road to get to the next section of three holes. If building this course had been about building a golf course rather than building houses, they could have just put the par 3 in this relatively flat space. They probably could have still figured out a way to put houses around it. But then I guess they wouldn’t have had a golf hole to put houses around where the twelfth hole is. In any case, I’m sure that a lot of the stupidity of the routing wasn’t Strantz’s fault.

Ok, last time I'll complain about the routing...we see the twelfth hole left and the thirteenth center. Then a few hundred yards of houses before we cross the road and play the fourteenth out the top right. Now why couldn't they have shifted the par 3 into this space?

After this stupid journey, we come another short, but much more awkward par 4. It really best to treat this hole as two par 3s, where the green of the first par 3 is just short of the two bunkers at the right edge of the gap. A shot of about 200 yards here will leave you about as clear a view of the green as you can get.

It’s possible for long hitters to go for the green, but it’s about a 270 yard carry over junk and it isn’t particularly wide on the other side. If you place your first shot well, it’s only about 100 yards to a very receptive green.

While I like the hole for how it plays, like many others on the course, I like it more as a piece of landscape architecture. I think it looks fantastic from the tee--the shaping is so thorough across the entire view and blends seamlessly into the woods left and...well I'm not even sure where it ends on the right.

More than probably any other hole here, you should keep this one simple--200 yards at the two bunkers just right of the gap.

The approach does look like something you'd find on an Irish course save for the juniper bushes and pines on the mounds. Many of the mounds on this course are covered in juniper bushes and this is another element that gives the course a good look.

After all that complexity, the green is quite simple.

The par 3 fifteenth is also a very good looking hole. This is another hole that penalizes you pretty severely if you don’t reach the front of the green (also if you miss to the right). But the green is large—probably 130 X 120 feet. So if you’re playing from the correct set of tees, don’t have much of an excuse for not hitting it.

Like many holes here, this one looks harder than it is. The green must be over 10,000 square feet.

Sixteen is a tough, 450 yard dogleg left. There’s plenty of room to play out to the right but to shorten the approach, it’s probably best to keep it up the left. You don’t want to cut it too close however because your second can be blocked by trees.

Cut a bit to the left, but not too much. A draw is obviously helpful.

The approach is one of the more conventional-looking on the course and in general, I’d say this is one of the more conventional holes. But it’s a good challenge and a good hole.

More conventional, but not easy. Hedge short because the green has some pretty nasty back-to-front slope.

After another 350 yard drive back under the road, we come to a 535 yard par 5 that’s stylistically quite different from the rest of the course. This hole, rather than having its own manufactured landscape like the other holes, fits into the gentle, forested surroundings. It’s still a tough hole, with a creek running down the entire right side and crossing in front of the shallow green. Other than the obvious—don’t go in the creek—be careful if laying up about running through the fairway into the woods on the left.

Some have complained about the stylistic disconnect between this hole and the rest of the course. But that doesn't bother me; instead, I see a very natural hole that blends in very well with the flat, forested surroundings.

Be careful if laying up on the approach not to go too far and into the woods on the left. Both they and the green are a bit closer than you might think.

Looking back on the green from the eighteenth tee.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that the eighteenth is the dumbest hole on the course. I didn’t get a photo of the drive, but the fairway is almost endlessly wide. Drive it any further than about 260 however and it runs out. The approach is over a pond to a wide but shallow peninsula.

Apparently there used to be a waterfall behind this green. That would have appropriately highlighted the silliness of the hole. If it’s too expensive to maintain a waterfall, I’d suggest a windmill as perhaps a lower maintenance alternative.

This approach is ugly and stupid. An unfitting finish to a very good course.

Like the other Strantz courses that I’ve played (except Caledonia), Royal New Kent is a mixed bag. There are a lot of big positives, but also some pretty big negatives. I think the biggest positive is this course as a work of landscape architecture. Most of the holes, regardless of how they play, look great. The shaping is as thorough as any I’ve seen so that each hole looks like its own cohesive world. And when you can see the surroundings, the margins of the holes blend in well to their surroundings—the wildness tends to taper out at the edges and while the middles of the holes are clearly manufactured, it’s often difficult to tell where at the sides the manufacturing ends. Often, you can’t tell within the margins of the hole if something is completely manufactured or based on a pre-existing landform. Thinking about it now, this aspect of Strantz’s work reminds me a lot of Fazio’s…which shouldn’t be surprising because Strantz worked for Fazio for many years.

I read a quote, I think by Bill Coore, calling Fazio the best landscape architect in golf. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but it really isn’t if you think about it. It can’t be easy to build holes that are so thoroughly shaped yet blend in well with their surroundings. Looking through my pictures of Royal New Kent, I’m realizing just how well this course does this. And it’s a much harder thing to do in the tough ground here than somewhere like Tobacco Road, where it’s all sand.

The other positive is that I think most of these holes work in their own right. Many, like the par 3 third or the par 5 fifth, are complicated and it isn’t clear what you’re supposed to do or where you can miss. But most holes—even ones that I like less like the par 4 eleventh—create an avenue to play safe. And many of these holes, in addition to being beautiful works of landscape architecture, are exciting to play and require a good amount of thought. So I think hole-for-hole, the course is very good.

But there are negatives. The most obvious one, which I’ve said enough about already, is the routing. It’s at least minus-half-a-point for that; the worst Strantz routing that I’ve seen. The other thing is that while I think hole-for-hole the course is good, they add up to being a bit too much. Yes, there’s a way to play each hole. But on so many of them, playing safe isn’t the easiest thing to do. Often, it’s not obvious how to play safe. And there are just a few too many holes like this. I think the course would be better if it turned down the complexity and difficulty a bit more often. Repeated plays would definitely help figure it out and might make me more forgiving on this point. But the astronomical slope rating is an indication that it’s probably a bit overdone.

Where does this course rank among the four Strantz courses that I’ve played? It’s definitely behind Caledonia, which packs so much interest into such a small piece of property and doesn’t display any of Strantz’s weakness for excess. I’d also have it behind Tobacco Road which, despite having a few awful holes, has a handful of both the best and most original holes that I’ve played. But I think that Royal New Kent is a slightly better course than True Blue because hole-for-hole, there’s more creativity in the design of the holes. Also, I'll take Royal New Kent's one bad finishing hole over True Blue's three overdone finishing holes.

So Royal New Kent is definitely worth a play if you’re going through or aren’t too far from southeastern Virginia. It’s a perfect complement to Golden Horseshoe. These courses, which I’d actually rate pretty similarly to each other, could hardly be more different and I always like when a golf destination has good courses that are very different from each other. Apart from golf, the big draw in the area of course is colonial Williamsburg, which I also liked. Yes, it’s more for children and old people. But it’s a pleasant place to take a walk and I enjoyed having dinner in the old tavern. George Washington’s favorite cocktail—the Cherry Bounce, a mix of cherries, brandy, and spices—was also a favorite of mine.