Tobacoo Road

Of every course that I’ve played, there probably isn’t one that would elicit stronger opinions from golfers than Mike Strantz’s Tobacco Road. It has to be one of the boldest courses ever designed, with fairways winding through 40 foot high mounds, greens located in 15X100 ft. trenches, and bunkers that look like they must have been shaped by the air force. In addition to being completely original, some of these holes are absolutely brilliant. Among well-traveled people, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s pretty good agreement that the best 3 or 4 holes here would hang with the best 3 or 4 holes on almost any course in the world.

But Tobacco Road also has some of the worst holes that I’ve ever played. Several greens are extremely shallow (like 15-20 ft.) and very wide (in some cases 60-80 yards) with junk short and long. In addition to being, in my opinion, aesthetically ugly, these shots are almost impossible to play for higher handicap golfers. Even if part of the green is a bit deeper, if you successfully play to it, you’ll have a 70 or 80 ft. putt where you can’t go at the hole. If they go at the hole unsuccessfully, the next few shots are likely to be back-and-forth across the green from unforgiving hardpan sand (all of the course’s bunkers are waste bunkers). This, plus blindness and narrowness on the way to several greens (but usually not in the driving zone) makes Tobacco Road one of the hardest courses for high handicap golfers that I’ve seen.

Low handicap golfers, however, are likely to tear this place up. The landing areas for good drives are all very wide and you’ll be playing a short iron to all these wide, shallow greens. As long and the course isn’t wet or you pick your irons clean (even though it’s on pure sand, there are a lot of soggy catchment basins), the low handicapper should shoot well because the course isn’t very long. Especially given their proximity, I see this course as sort-of an anti-Pinehurst no.2; extremely hard for the high handicapper, but easy for the low handicapper. Lots of trouble in front, but usually less to the sides. Often no reasonable place for a high handicapper to miss and if there is, it usually isn’t somewhere in front of the green.


We find another of the course’s anti-Pinehurst no. 2—in fact anti-Donald Ross—aspects at the first hole: a long, difficult par 5 with potentially several blind shots. More a kick in the balls than a gentle handshake. And also a very good example of a hole that’s tough for high handicappers but not for low handicappers. It’s a pretty noteworthy drive—between two 40 ft. tall dunes. It’s only about 210 yards to get past the first dune on the right from near the tips. But if you only carry the ball 150 yards, you’re going to have to navigate the probably 20 ft. wide opening between them.

The drive between huge dunes on one--very difficult for shorter hitters, but it's wide-open beyond them.

If you’ve hit a good drive up the left, you’ll have a partial view through a cleft in another dune ridge that crosses the fairway about 120 yards short of the green. Although you have to have played the course or taken a look over the ridge, it’s a great second shot for good players because the fairway on the other side is wide, but there’s a huge advantage to being up the left side. The left side of the green is open while the right side is obscured by another ridge with bunkers. I thought that the green was the most beautiful on the course; it sits gently on the land and runs front-to-back with the general slope. Despite the difficulties for higher handicappers, I thought that this was a great hole and I was really excited to see what comes next.

Strantz was nice enough to cut through the ridge on the proper line if you've driven it far enough to get past it.

The green opens up from the left. One of the most attractive approaches on the course.

The second hole continues with the visual confusion. You drive over a huge waste bunker, which depending on which of the back tees you play, is a 220-240 yard carry. If you can’t carry it (in which case, you should move up a set of tees), you have to play way out to the right and will have a completely blind shot. But this drive is one of many examples of something that I don’t really like: if you can make a carry, the fairway is unmissably wide. If you can’t, either the shot’s unplayable or you have to take some bizarre alternative route.

The confusing drive on two. If you can't carry the bunker just left of where the cart is, you should move up a set of tees.

The approach off a good drive up the left side.

The third is probably my favorite par 3 on the course. The green is almost 60 yards deep but it’s very interesting, with a large swale in the middle third and a ridge on the right that enables you to work the ball to back hole locations. You have to be accurate, but the fact that the whole green is accessible and the interesting contours make this one of the better, and less controversial holes on the course.

The par 3 third.

Approaching the magnificent third green. It's sort of a biarritz-redan, with the swale in the middle but also a ridge in the back-right that you can use to feed the ball to the back left corner.

From behind the green.

Another one of the best and least controversial holes is the dogleg left, short par 5 fourth. It’s just a great hole. The dominant feature here is the huge waste bunker that runs from the landing area to the green. The closer you keep your ball to it, the easier it will be to reach the green in two. But the bunker cuts into the lay-up zone so if you drive it out to the right, you’ll have to figure out how much of the bunker you can carry. The further right you go, the blinder the shot (but it’s wide open) and the more awkward the angle for the approach. If you’re too far right, an oak tree right of the green will partially block a shot to the back of the green. If you go for it in two, you can use the slopes short and right of the green to run your ball onto the green. It’s a great hole that works for everyone.

Keep your drive near the left bunker on four.

While you don't want to drive it here, you can see the choice on the second: the waste bunker cuts a diagonal path to the green so the closer you want to get, the more you must carry.

The fourth green is another beauty, but they should get rid of this little patch of rough in the left of this image.

Looking back down the fourth.

I think that the short par 4 fifth is also a great hole, but there’s some serious danger out there. You can go straight for the green to the left with only about a 210-230 yard carry over the sand. Again, the fairway to the right is very wide and you only need to go about 200-215 if you lay-up. But the green is severe; shallow from the lay-up area, with a false front that’ll take your ball 25 yards back off the front of the green. There’s a reasonable amount of room up there, but make sure that you take enough club and err a bit right.

Either go for the green over the small pines to the left or carry as much of the fairway bunker that you feel (very) comfortable with. No point in taking a lot of risk here. Part of playing Tobacco Road is tuning out the visual overload.

The approach off a good lay-up. Short=terrible.

After the first five holes, I thought that I might be playing one of the small handful of best courses that I’ve played. My view started to change at the short par 3 sixth. It starts with the routing--the sixth green and seventh tees are right behind the fifth green, but we must walk ~150 yards back to get to the sixth tees. Then the hole features one of the course’s unfortunate signature features: a green that’s about 15 ft. deep in many places and 60 yards wide. And there are about 2 acres of tee boxes. A lot of people might like the flexibility that this brings, but it just strikes me as an architect not being sure about what hole he wanted to design, so he tried to incorporate every design into one. In any case, if you’re unsure about your distances, play to the deeper left side of the green.

The sixth, with today's pin in one of the 15 ft. deep sections.

The par 4 seventh isn’t a bad hole, but not my favorite. The fairway is blind, but it’s about 75 yards wide. The objective is to drive it as far as you can, so maybe the idea was ‘let’s see how hard you can swing and how solid of contact you can make under uncertainty.’ The green is large and undulating and while a long drive is probably the most important thing, being up the left side is good too.

The approach to seven.

I’m also not a fan of the long par 3 eighth. The green is hook shaped from shot left to long right around a bunker. There’s a huge tier in the left side and the back right is very shallow over a bunker. Back left pins aren’t bad, but you pretty much either get the distance right or you have a very hard second shot.

The long par 3 eighth. I'm not sure if the ridge that frames the left and back of the green is the result of mining spoils or was constructed by Strantz. Either way, I don't like it.

I’ve heard about and read a lot of complaining concerning the par 4 ninth. And it’s completely justified. The hole bottlenecks right where the high handicapper is going to land their drive but beyond that, it’s wide open. But the real trouble is on the approach; the green is up a waste bunker-covered hill and sits in a saddle about 30 feet wide and 40 yards deep. There’s effectively zero width to the green but the area is concave so if you can get your ball up there, you’ll have a decent shot. But that’s the problem—it’s very difficult to get up there. The lay-up area short-left is too small for higher handicappers to hit with any consistency. I would imagine that a pretty high percentage of golfers don’t finish this hole.

For good players, this drive is easier than it looks because the bunkers that pinch the fairway are only about a 200-215 yard carry and the fairway beyond them is huge.

The approach to the green is very uphill, very narrow, and very protected by crap.

From behind the ninth green we can see that it's just...kind of silly.

The long par 4 tenth is more straight-forward, doglegging right along a massive waste bunker. The green is open from the front-left, so it’s actually best to hit a long drive to the outside of the dogleg. The green is large and one of the more interesting on the course.

Ten is a good driving hole.

The approach to the interesting green.

The par 5 eleventh hole seems to be a lot of people’s favorite at Tobacco Road and I think that there’s good reason for that. The drive is wide open with a waste bunker running down its right side. It’s natural to assume that it’s best to keep your drive close to this bunker and that’s correct. The approach to the green from here is quite something. The bunker on the approach to the green looks like it was shaped by a few B-52s. If you go for it, you’d better hit it solid (although I was able to get out of the bunker…).

Keep your drive as close to the right bunker as you can on eleven.

The approach to the green is certainly one of the more dramatic that I've seen.

The lay-up is really interesting because there are a few options. The safest is to keep it about 90-100 yards short of the green. If you go further, you have to carry part of the bomb crater bunker. It looks like there isn’t a lot of room up there, but there is. And if you go a bit further right, you can run the ball onto the front left of the green. It’s a great hole because there’s a lot of drama and there are a lot of reasonable but interesting options for everyone from the low to the high handicapper.

The safest lay-up doesn't try to challenge the bunker in the middle of this photo, but there's more room up there that appears.

From the driving zone in the top right corner, you can see that there's a lot more room left of the green than it seems in the view from ground level.

The par 4 twelfth gives lower handicappers a taste of what higher handicappers have been experiencing throughout: the fairway narrows right where you want to land your drive. Unless you lay up, you need to be very accurate or be able to carry it 250-270. The green has a huge waste bunker and ridge on its left and it’s very important to approach from the right side. Because that’s impossible unless you’ve driven it 300 or are approaching from a waste bunker, play to the front right.

If you want to leave yourself a reasonable length approach, twelve is probably the toughest driving hole on the course.

The approach is also unforgiving.

Unless you've hit a very good drive, it's probably best to play to here, just short and right of the green.

Despite the severity so far, Tobacco Road doesn’t start to get weird until the par 5 thirteenth. The drive is diagonal along a bunker on the right, but you always need to keep it under about 280 because on any line, the ball can run through the fairway. The second is blind and confusing, but just pick a club that gets you 100-140 yards from the green—it’s wide open at this distance. If you lay up closer, you’ll have to keep it left of the bunker that you can see on the right (you can’t see it, but there’s room there).

Long hitters should limit their drives to ~260 because you can go through the fairway on any line if you go much further.

If you don't hit it here, I suggest walking up into the right fairway bunker because it gives a much better view of the lay up area.

The green is in a trench that, continuing the war analogies, looks like something out of WWI. And your score is about as likely to get slaughtered here. It’s maybe 20 ft. deep, 60 feet wide, and except for about a 15 ft. wide slice on the right, completely blind. It’s very difficult to judge distance here; I hit what I though was a great shot and it got stuck on one of the mounds short of the green. Oh well.

The guy on the mound to the right of the green is a spotter, which conveys some useful information about the green site.

From just right of the green. They might as well put some gun turrets on the bunkers facing the fairway because getting on this green is the golf equivalent of fighting your way into a trench in WWI.

The downhill par 3 fourteenth over a pond is really pretty—but tough. It’s quite short if the flag is in the front left, but the green becomes a very small target for the ~170 yard shot if the flag is in the back.

The fourteenth is beautiful...and very difficult for most golfers. I'd put the over-under at about six balls in the water per four-ball.

After playing the fourteenth hole, I had one of my more special experiences on a golf course: I got completely lost trying to find the fifteenth hole. If you follow the cart path, the next hole you come to is the eighteenth…and to be honest, it might be best if you just continued on, played it, and finished with a 15 hole round. Because once you do find the fifteenth hole, you’re at the beginning of probably the worst three hole stretch that I’ve played.

The fourteenth green is in the bottom of this shot. Just above it playing off to the right is the eighteenth tee. The fifteenth tee is in the top left corner, on the other side of the mining company parking lot.

Actually, it starts well. The drive on fifteen is one of the most attractive on the course. You can only see part of the fairway, but enough so that it isn’t too intimidating (there’s also plenty of room over the trees on the right). Then things go completely wrong. Again, the culprit is a green that’s about 25 ft. deep and this time, about 70 yards wide. But the real problem here is that it isn’t just a wide strip—it’s sort-of S-shaped. And it’s fronted by a variety of bunkers, mounds, and tufts of grass. So you have absolutely no idea where you can hit the ball. It’s impossible to get a yardage because the distance to the middle of the green gives you no sense of the distance to the far wings. And even if you did know the distance, you wouldn’t have any sense of where you can miss and what the distances are to hit the green if you miss slightly left or right.

To be fair, when I played, the flag was on the left, which is probably the most confusing part of the green to hit to. If the flag is on the right, it might be a little bit more comprehensible, especially if you’re in the left side of the fairway. But—and I’m generally a huge defender of blind shots—there’s too much uncertainty in playing to any flag and nowhere to play safe. You can play to a more open area, but the next shot might be impossible.

The attractive drive on fifteen.

It's difficult to tell what's going on with the green on fifteen.

And once you see it, you still won't be sure what was going on in Strantz's mind. The green is about 8 X 70 yards and wavy, so you won't know the distance to the pin or where the safe side is.

A peculiar amenity tells you quite a bit about the short par 4 sixteenth—a course-appointed ball spotter on a dune on the corner of the dogleg left who comes and tells you where to hit the ball. And you’ll need him, probably even if you’ve played the course before, because it looks like you’re hitting into a sea of rough and bunkers. The best line is the left edge of the nearest line of trees in the distance. There’s about 60 yards deep of fairway to hit to here but if you go right, you can run out of fairway if you go more than about 220 yards. But you’ve got to carry it about 160 even from the forward tees to carry the junk and that can lead to some unpleasant surprised as I learned from one of my playing partners.

A baffling drive on sixteen.

Even if you hit the fairway and have a perfect yardage, you have a variety of problems. The fairway is full of collection areas and drains and there’s a good chance that your ball is in a divot and if it’s wet, that your lie is really soggy. And the green is one of the silliest that I’ve ever seen. It has a false front that takes your ball 30 yards back off the front of the green. But it has another tier in the middle that’s so steep that if you hit it, your ball will roll back off the front of the green, 30 yards down the fairway. You need to be very precise with your distance and spin control here, or the shot to the green is basically unplayable.

If the spotter really wanted to help, he wouldn't have pointed at my ball, he would have picked it up and thrown it on the green.

Here's something stupid that I learned: if you land your ball on the slope just behind the pin, it'll roll all the way back off the front of the green and 60 yards down the fairway. As my ball did that, I picked it up and walked to the next tee.

The short downhill par 3 seventeenth is about 3 or 4 pretty good holes, but one bad one because Strantz decided that it would be all of them at the same time. Actually to this pin on the left side of the green, it’s a perfectly good downhill par 3 to a small green. But the green runs another 85 yards to the right, with distinct left, middle, and right sections. The teeing grounds are about 100 yards wide. And the eighteenth tee is actually right behind the sixteenth green, so the routing is a mess, especially if the flag is on the left side.

​I’d have been interested to play the left tee/right pin combination, which would have been an interesting semi-blind shot over a mound. But as we can see in the second picture, this area is probably too small and slopes away from the angle of play into junk. So I’m not sure that that iteration of the hole would work, although it would make the routing more coherent.

This iteration of the par 3 seventeenth is a good one.

And over the mound in the far right portion of the previous photo, 100 yards right of today's pin, we have this hidden section of the green.

I don’t think that the long par 4 eighteenth is a bad hole in it’s own right, but it’s too hard for most golfers. And given all that we’ve just been through, that makes it a bad hole because it just piles on. It’s an almost impossible drive for weaker players because even though the carry to the fairway from the forward tees is about 130 yards, it’s at least 20 feet uphill over another sandy bomb crater. Again, the hole greatly favors long hitters because the further you go, the wider it is. The green is deep but narrow, with severe fall offs on both sides. It’s a very difficult shot for a low handicapper. If you’re a higher handicapper, you’ll break your record for the amount of times that you pick up in a round…if you haven’t already.

The drive on eighteen: very difficult for everyone, almost impossible for short hitters.

The eighteenth green is undulating and surrounded by hardship.

Tobacco Road is a very tough course to rate because it has more variance in the quality of the holes than any course that I’ve played. Some of the holes (1,4,11) are among the best that I’ve played. Most of the rest are good to very good, even if sometimes a bit questionable (i.e. 13). But six holes (6,9,15-18) are questionable-in-a-bad-way to simply horrible. And the routing of the latter is a mess too. I think that there’s a trade-off between good/bad routings and good/bad holes where at least if you’re going to sacrifice routing coherence, you should at least use that to build better holes. Here, the worst parts of the routing (5-7, 15-17) also produce the worst holes (6,15-17). I can’t believe that even if the property were awkward, such a lose-lose situation couldn’t have been avoided.

The routing of 15-18 (15 top left-to-right, 16 top right to bottom-center, 17 playing to the right but with 18 tees behind 16 green) is a mess.

There were probably a lot of ways to solve these problems. One would be to put a par 3 in the 180 yard walk between 12 and 13 and get rid of the par 3 seventeenth. Then 15 and 16 could be a simple out and back starting from the 16th green. That would solve two routing problems and three bad hole problems.

There's plenty of room for a nice, uphill par 3 between the twelfth green in the bottom right and the thirteen tees in the top left.

And then you’d have what this course should be: not only one of the most original public golf courses in the country, but one of the best. The course does pretty well in the rankings as it is but it’s very controversial and I think that much of this was just unnecessary. I suspect that it would do a lot better if it had been toned down. A few quirks like the thirteenth green can be great, but there has to be balance. And that’s just lacking at Tobacco Road. And again, opposite to the spirit of Pinehurst no. 2, a lot of these quirks are manageable for good players but just kill high handicappers, especially those who struggle to carry the ball more than 150 yards off the tee…which is a lot of people.

Now you might say ‘well, isn’t the fact that it’s unique in the world of golf justification enough? Just like there’s nothing like Pinehurst no. 2, doesn’t it count in favor of Tobacco Road that there’s nothing like Tobacco Road?’ But that supposes that you couldn’t keep the essential Tobacco Roadyness if you changed a few holes. I think that you could. The four par 5s wouldn’t change and those are the holes that most people remember for the better. I’m not saying that they should get rid of some of the bold green contours or the wild waste bunkers. But fewer wide, skinny greens and a more cohesive routing wouldn’t cost this course much of what people see as special. It’d be a little more like Caledonia, which I find to be a superior Strantz course, but it’d keep the wildness that rightly makes Tobacco Road a noteworthy course.