Review: Atlantic City Country Club (Part 2)

See Part 1 here.

Alright, we've taken a break at the turn, now, back to the golf. We start the back nine with a short par 5, and the best birdie opportunity on the course. 490 yards downwind, if you cut the dogleg it's effectively shorter than 9. Or you could pop it up into the trees right, hit a tree on your punch shot and have to get up and down for par, completely wasting the best opportunity for birdie on the entire course. What's that? I did the second thing? Of course I did. Anyway, if you've hit a good drive and cut the dogleg, the second shot isn't easy, per se, considering the pond left of the green, but chances are you've got a short iron in hand, and that makes the shot a little less intimidating.

Next up is the eleventh, a hole with lots of sand in play. This is a hole where you definitely want to hit the fairway, so I'd say that a 3 wood is probably the best option off the tee. That'll leave a longer approach, and this is a fairly long par 4, but you don't want to be in any of those fairway bunkers. This isn't a particularly inspired hole either, so we'll move on.

The twelfth, at 134 yards, is the shortest hole at Atlantic City, but this is not a hole to be underestimated. The green is not large, and it is completely surrounded with sand. It also played straight into the wind, so a couple of extra clubs off the tee are absolutely needed to reach the hole. Basically, you want to hit this green with your tee shot. Otherwise, making par is difficult.

It's at the thirteenth hole where the fun really begins. We've been teased before, but for the next four holes, the salt marsh will be very much in play. We start off the run with a 550 yard par 5 playing straight into the wind. The tee shot is the most demanding on the course, with a pond left and the salt marsh right. It was too much for me, I pushed my drive right into the marsh. Had to do it at least once. From the fairway, the best place to lay up is on the right side, along the marsh. This will give you the best angle into the green. It's interesting, out of the 3 par 5s on the course, only one of them is a real birdie opportunity. The others are long, into the wind, and actually pretty tough. If you're not on top of your game, you will bogey them. Just another thing to make this 6,600 yard course anything but a pushover.

We now find ourselves teeing off on a small peninsula jutting out into the marsh, facing a choice. The fourteenth hole is a short par 4, with the green tantalizingly close to the tee. The safe play is to aim well left and make sure you get across the water, but that's the coward's way out. So, even though the hole was playing into the wind and I'd been struggling with the driver all day, I stayed aggressive. The wind meant the green was out of range, but my driver decided to cooperate this time, and I had only a 50 yard pitch into the green. That shot rolled 18 feet past, and I rolled in the putt for the only birdie of the day. Most people would give this hole the award as the best on the course, and it is a lot of fun, especially from all the way back.

Next up is a medium length par 3. Well, it was 190 yards, but it was downwind, so an 8 iron was all that I needed. Now, I was an idiot on this and the next hole. Not in terms of golf, but in terms of the cart that I had to use. I left it right in the way, and while I was able to crop it out on this hole without effecting the picture too much, you'll have to deal with it on the next hole. Anyway, even downwind, this is still not a friendly looking hole. There's not much room to miss anywhere.

Oops

Better

The last hole along the marsh is the sixteenth, a mid length par 4 that played right into the wind. The sixteenth tee is what you saw in the little preview I showed a couple weeks ago. But hey, it makes the tee shot that much more compelling, not that it needed much help. On a course filled with excellent holes, this one might just be the best. It's close between this and the fourteenth. The risk/reward factor is much more obvious on 14, but this hole is much more of a challenge. Even a good drive left a mid-iron, a safe drive out to the left would mean a long iron and a worse angle over greenside bunkers. And I don't know, this hole just looks a little better to me.

It is a bit of a letdown to leave the coast, but the seventeenth does make it easier. Of all the holes on this course, this is the one that looks the most links-like, though arguably it would fit better on the Melbourne Sandbelt. Either way, this is a good looking hole, played to a semi-blind green nestled in a little bowl. All you can see from the tee is the flag and a lot of bunkers. It's a little longer than 4 or 12, but it's nowhere close to being as long as 15 or 8, and it played downwind as well. It's still not an easy hole, the green is really quite small, and the tee shot is intimidating.

The eighteenth is a 430 yard par 4, playing straight downwind. That was a good thing, I think this hole would be a lot less enjoyable into the wind. The back nine up to this point has been generally short and quirky, and to close with a long par 4 playing into the wind would be inappropriate, I think. We had our tough par 4 back at 16. But downwind, this hole becomes a lot more fun, and a challenge as to how much of that dogleg you're willing to bite off. The difference between how I played this hole and how I played 16 nicely illustrate the benefits of wind in golf. On 16, a 400 yard hole, a good drive and a good 8 iron wasn't quite enough to get to the green. On this hole, 30 yards longer, a good drive and a sand wedge airmailed the green. The hole was all the way back, and there was no way I was going to get up and down from that position. So it was a bogey to end the round.

The back nine is actually not very long, not even topping 3,200 yards, but I would not go so far as to call it easy. The front was definitely harder, but the wind was even more of a factor on the back, and that kept it from being a pushover. I can't vouch for the day in and day out, but I'm going to guess the wind I experienced was a normal occurrence, and that provides as much defense as a few hundred extra yards would do on an inland course.

And now for the big question: How is the golf course? Well, I'm happy to say that it is fantastic, and easily the best golf course I've ever played. Everything came together beautifully to make this probably the best round of golf I've ever played. The weather was great, the views were great, I didn't have to do too much waiting around, and the golf was very good. I've gone lower than 78, and since this was a par 70, I've definitely had several rounds where I was better off in relation to par, but this was real golf, and a real golf course. It was tough, and I had to earn that 78. I'm not usually very good around the greens, to put it mildly, but I was all over it out there. I didn't miss a single chip. Is it expensive? Yes, it really is. It was $99 after 3:10 PM, and if you start in the morning, you would pay almost double that. I won't say the course is worth that much, because I don't think it is. But I felt like I got my money's worth, and that really is saying something. I probably wouldn't go back in the summer months, but I would definitely play here again if I'm ever in the area.